How to Keep the Screen Display On in Windows 10

If you have Windows 10, then you have probably noticed that leaving your PC idle for a certain amount of time will activate your screen saver. Your PC might also go into sleep mode after a long enough period of inactivity.

These are features are meant to help your computer conserve power and can also act as a security measure for when you walk away from your PC.

Still, there may be times that you want your screen to stay on regardless of whether or not you are actively using the computer. Fortunately, this is pretty easy to do.

In this article, I will provide you with a basic tutorial on a couple of different ways to set up your system to always keep the screen on in Windows 10.

Let’s get started.

How to Keep the Screen Display On in Windows 10

There are two methods you can use to make sure your display always stays on. You can either do so either by changing your Windows 10 settings or by using a third-party tool.

Changing Your Windows 10 Settings

First, let’s look at how you can keep your display turned on by changing your Windows 10 settings.

To open your screen saver settings, type “Change screen saver” into the Cortana search box in your Windows 10 taskbar. Select Change screen saver to open the window shown below. From here you can change all your screen saver settings.

Select the Screen saver drop-down menu and click (None) from there. Click Apply and OK to apply the settings. That switches the screen saver off; however, there are a few more steps to take to ensure that the display always stays on.

Next, click the Change power settings at the bottom of the window. Then select Change when the computer sleeps to open the window below:

On this window, you’ll have the option to change how long it takes for your computer to go to sleep and how long before the display is turned off.

To ensure your display is always on, select Never from the drop-down menu and click Save changes.

Now, your PC display should never turn off until you close the lid.

Using Third-Party Tools

You can also keep the display on without configuring any Windows 10 settings by using third-party software.

One of those programs is Caffeine, which you can install from here. Click caffeine.zip to download the compressed program. Open the folder in File Explorer, press the Extract all button and then select a path to extract it to. You can run the software from the extracted folder.

Caffeine effectively simulates someone pressing the F15 key (which on most PCs does nothing) every 59 seconds so that Windows 10 thinks someone is using the machine. 

When it’s running, you’ll find the Caffeine icon in the system tray as shown below. You can right-click that icon and select Active to switch it on. You can always switch it off by clicking that option again.

Try it out by selecting a screen saver to come on after a certain period. Then switch on the Caffeine Active option. The screen saver won’t come on at all.

Final Thoughts

By default, most, if not all, PCs turn off your display after a certain amount of time. This can help your computer save power and deter others from using your computer while you’re away, but it can be pretty annoying to have to constantly wake up your machine.

Those are two different ways you can keep the display on. Do you have tips or techniques for keeping the display on using other tools? Share them with us in the comments below!

And, don’t forget to check out some other great Windows 10 articles, such as How to Install Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) on Windows 10.