Windows – Shortcut to Change Monitor Timeout Settings

For my PC and laptop I use a power plan to Never turn off the display and Never put the computer to sleep.

When I leave to the store to buy something I want to quickly set the monitor to go off after 3 minutes, then when I come back to easily switch the setting back to Never.

So I made two shortcuts on my desktop called 3 minutes and Never, even made custom icons for them, so now I can easily switch between Power Plan settings.

1. Right click on Desktop and select New – Shortcut
2. Paste the following line for changing Turn off the display to 3 minutes: powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac 3
3. Click Next and name your shortcut the way you desire, then Finish
4. Right click on Desktop and select New – Shortcut
5. Paste the following line for changing Turn off the display to Never: powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac 0
6. Click Next and name your shortcut the way you desire, then Finish

If instead of turning off monitor, you want to put the computer to sleep, in the command lines from no. 2 and 5 above simply replace the word monitor with the word standby.

I used a simple and free icon making site called favicon (just google it), to create these 2 “wonderful” and suggestive icons (see below).