[arch-general] Turning off the screen for privacy

[Emil Lundberg]

Using the `--off` option in xrandr seems to work for me:

    $ xrandr --output DVI-1 --off

You can list your available outputs and their status using the plain
`xrandr` command, I suspect what you'll be looking for on a laptop is an
output like LVDS. There are also GUIs for this, such as arandr, in case
that's a better option (please forgive my ignorance regarding blindness
accessibility...).

/Emil

On Tue, 15 Mar 2016 at 19:13 J. Pablo <elfio at hiperones.es> wrote:

> Hi aguan,
>
> Sorry to bother you, but I just realized the screen light up again as soon
> as
> you press any key or move the mouse. :(
>
> El martes, 15 de marzo de 2016 19:10:12 (CET) J. Pablo escribió:
> > Hi archers,
> >
> > First time writer here, reader from quite a time ago. Hi Zack, I used to
> use
> > this command:
> > $ xset dpms force off
> > and I've just checked it still works from my shell. I don't know if this
> > will suit your needs.
> >
> > Pablo.
> >
> > El martes, 15 de marzo de 2016 10:30:52 (CET) Zachary Kline escribió:
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > One of the perks of being blind is that I don’t need the screen to
> work. I
> > > prefer to keep it off for privacy whenever possible. On earlier
> hardware,
> > > I
> > > used to be able to use the vbetool command to turn off the screen.
> > > Nowadays
> > > that seems no longer to work, “vbetool dpms off,” returns “illegal
> > > instruction.”
> > >
> > > I was wondering if anybody knew of a way too do this under current
> > > versions
> > > of Arch? Ideally, I could turn off the screen for both virtual consoles
> > > and
> > > X sessions, whenever i get around to installing Gnome. I realize this
> is a
> > > bit of an unusual request. Sadly, my laptop doesn’t have any easily
> > > identified hardware buttons to do this sort of thing. Thanks for any
> tips,
> > > Zack.
>