xscreensaver-systemd(1)

xscreensaver-systemd1

Lock the screen upon suspend, and inhibit screen-blanking during video playback.

Usage

xscreensaver-systemd [--verbose] [--version]

Overview

The xscreensaver-systemd program is a helper daemon launched by xscreensaver(1) for systemd(1) or elogind(8) integration. It does two things:

*

When the system is about to go to sleep (e.g., the laptop lid has just been closed) it locks the screen just before the system sleeps, by running xscreensaver-command --suspend. When the system wakes up again, it runs xscreensaver-command --deactivate to make the unlock dialog appear immediately. It does this through the org.freedesktop.login1(5) D-Bus interface.

*

When another process asks for the screen saver to be inhibited (e.g. because a video is playing) this program periodically runs xscreensaver-command --deactivate to keep the display un-blanked. It does this until that other program asks for it to stop, or exits. It does this through the org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver(5), org.gnome.SessionManager(5) and org.kde.Solid.PowerManagement.PolicyAgent(5) D-Bus interfaces.

Releases

3 releases since Debian 11 (Bullseye); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 11
  2. 12
  3. 13

Bugs

Blanking-related problems take two forms: failing to connect to D-Bus; and other programs requesting stupid things.

D-bus

Only one program at a time can register with systemd(1) or elogind(8) for screen-saver-related events, so if another screen saver is running as a part of the desktop environment, xscreensaver-systemd will be unable to launch. This program has workarounds for Gnome and KDE, but if you are using something else, that might be a problem.

Chrome & chromium (101.0)

*

Playing only audio in Chrome will prevent your screen from blanking. Chrome sends the exact same "inhibit" reason for audio as for video, so we can't tell them apart.

*

Chrome prevents your screen from blanking when playing short, looping videos. This means that your screen won't blank when Chrome is showing a Twitter page (because those animated GIFs aren't really GIFs, they are MP4s). This affects Tweetdeck as well.

The proper way to fix this would be for Chrome to stop inhibiting once a video loops. That way your multi-hour movie inhibits properly, but your looping GIF only inhibits for the first few seconds.

Firefox does not have either of these problems.

Mplayer (2:1.4)

Makes no attempt to inhibit the screen saver. Use VLC instead.

MPV (0.33)

Makes no attempt to inhibit the screen saver. Use VLC instead.

Various

Most programs fail to re-enable screen blanking if they crash or are killed while playing. We try to detect when this has happened, but that might not work with all versions of systemd, resulting in screen blanking remaining permanently disabled. If that happens, killing and restarting xscreensaver-systemd is a workaround.

Author

Martin Lucina <[email protected]>, 4-Jun-2019

From xscreensaver 6.09+dfsg1-1 in Debian 13 (Trixie). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.