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Set Your Windows Computer’s Screen to Lock Automatically

When you leave your computer, it’s best to start a screen saver that can only be turned off with a password. You should set up a screen saver that will start after your computer has been idle for a set interval (15 minutes or less).

You can also lock your screen manually.

How to Set Your Computer to Lock Your Screen Automatically: Windows 7 and 8

When you leave your computer, it’s best to start a screensaver that can only be turned off with a password.

1. Open the Control Panel .
   • For Windows 7: on the Start menu, click Control Panel.
   • For Windows 8: see documentation from Microsoft.
2. Click Personalization, and then click Screen Saver.
3. In the Wait box, choose 15 minutes (or less)
4. Click On resume, display logon screen, and then click OK.

When your computer has been inactive for the set amount of time, the screen saver starts. Your password is required to start using the computer again.

How to Lock Your Screen Manually

Use this procedure to lock your screen without waiting for the screen saver to start.

1. Press the Windows logo key + L.
   The Windows logo key is near the Spacebar on your keyboard.

Your password is required to start using the computer again.

4 ways to lock your Windows 10 PC

No Dynamic Lock? No problem.

Maybe you haven’t installed the Windows 10 Creators Update yet. Or maybe you have but don’t want to rely on Bluetooth and the new Dynamic Lock feature to lock your PC when you leave its vicinity. No matter your reason for locking your PC manually, you should know that you’ve got four ways to lock your PC. They are:

1. Windows-L

Hit the Windows key and the L key on your keyboard. Keyboard shortcut for the lock!

2. Ctrl-Alt-Del

Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete. On the menu that pops up, click Lock. Boom, done.

3. Start button

Tap or click the Start button in the bottom-left corner. Click your user icon and then select Lock.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

4. Auto lock via screen saver

You can set your PC to lock automatically when the screen saver pops up. Go to Control Panel > Appearance & Personalization > Change screen saver and then check the box for On resume, display logon screen. You can also set a time for how long your PC should wait before starting the screen saver. Now, when you exit out of the screensaver, you’ll need to enter your system password to get back in.

With Windows 10 Creators Update, Microsoft moved this screen saver setting from the Control Panel to Settings. You can find it by going to Settings > Personalization > Lock screen > Screen saver settings.

Windows auto lock screen

Вопрос

I need to set up auto locking of all screens after 600 seconds. We have some Windows 10 which I have configured in Computer Configuration — Policies — Windows Settings — Security Settings — Local Policies set Interactive Logon to 600 Seconds.

However we also have Windows 7 PC’s and this doesn’t work. I am unable to set this policy at Domain Level as I do not want this applied to the servers(I know I can omit these but we are trying to limit our domain level policies for things like this). I can only see changing this is user settings which I don’t really want to do. Is there a way of setting this in computer configuration?

I have tried User Configuration — Policies — Administrative Templates — Control Panel — Personalization

Enabled Screen Saver

Force Screen Saver

Password Protect Screen Saver

And Set Screen Saver timeout to 600

I have run gpupdate /force but the policy is not applying (no errors just not there) I have tried enforcing it too but nothing.

Is there a simpler way of doing this on W7 PC’s like there is for 10?

Any help or ideas I would be really grateful,

How to disable auto lock feature on Windows 10?

Original title:- auto lock

how do I disable auto lock

Replies (11) 

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Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community. Let me assist you.

I would like to inform you that, this option is still not present on Windows 10.. I suggest you to send a feedback to Microsoft regarding this feature. Type Feedback on Search bar and go to Feedback app.

Hope this information is helpful. Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

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I would like to inform you that, this option is still not present on Windows 10.. I suggest you to send a feedback to Microsoft regarding this feature. Type Feedback on Search bar and go to Feedback app.

Is this a joke? Out of the many annoyances/bugs I’ve encountered after «upgrading» from Windows 7 to Windows 10, this is the most pointless and irritating feature I’ve encountered.

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i had the same problem but fixed it by hitting the window ss button on the keyboard, then type in settings and click enter, next it should open up setting so and then go to personalisation, look on the side panel on the left hand side and click lock screen, then scroll all the way down till you see screen timeout options at the bottom then tap that and turn everything to never.

That should help u

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I did this and it does not work on the revised version of Win 10. comes back as «Windows cannot find ‘settings’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again.»

I WANT TO TURN OFF the AUTO TIME OUT.

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Kindly follow this steps if you want to turn off screen time out option:

1. Right click on your Desktop then choose personalize.
2. On your left choose Lock Screen
3. Click on Screen Timeout Settings
4. On the Screen option, Choose Never
5. On the Sleep option, Choose Never

You can also check your Power Settings and make sure that the options are set to Never turn off.

Let us know what happens.

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Kindly follow this steps if you want to turn off screen time out option:

1. Right click on your Desktop then choose personalize.
2. On your left choose Lock Screen
3. Click on Screen Timeout Settings
4. On the Screen option, Choose Never
5. On the Sleep option, Choose Never

You can also check your Power Settings and make sure that the options are set to Never turn off.

Let us know what happens.

I did all of that already and my screen still times out after like 10 seconds of me not moving my mouse and it goes to the lock screen. I already turned off all of the above options and it still does it, it is very annoying

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How To Automatically Lock Windows 10 When Your System Is Inactive

Mar 1, 2018
Comment

Windows is a flexible OS that lets you do almost anything you want. You can control almost every aspect of it except, it seems, you cannot control when Windows 10 will lock. In fact, it doesn’t seem like you can automate locking Windows 10 unless you’re using Dynamic Lock. The truth is, you can automatically lock Windows 10 if your system has been idle for too long. The setting has been there from the very start and it is in fact a feature that was present in Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8/8.1.

To be clear, we’re talking about your system locking i.e. the same thing that happens when you tap Win+L. Your display will not be put to sleep, your system will not be put to sleep either. If those are the settings you’re looking for, go to Power Options in the Control Panel or go to the System group of settings in the Settings app and look under the Power & Sleep tab.

Automatically Lock Windows 10

Windows 10 still has a screensaver. You might recall that the screensaver, if active, can also lock your system. It’s always done that even in older versions of Windows. To automatically lock Windows 10 after you’ve been inactive for a while, you need to enable the screensaver.

Open the Settings app and go to the Personalization group of settings. Select the Lock Screen tab, and scroll to the very end. You will an option called Screen saver settings. Click it.

On the Screen saver settings window, open the dropdown and select ‘Blank’, or anything else. In the ‘Wait’ field, enter the autolock time period. For example, if you enter 1, the screensaver will activate if you’ve been inactive for 1 minute. Next, make sure you enable the ‘On resume, display logon screen’ option. This is what locks Windows 10.

That’s all you need to do. You can set the auto-lock time to as low as one minute. If you routinely forget to lock your system when you get up, you can enable a blank screensaver and it will automatically lock Windows 10 for you if you’ve been inactive too long. The best bit about this trick is that you can customize how long your system should be idle before it is automatically locked.

Automatically Sleep Windows 10

If you’re looking to automatically sleep Windows 10, and have it ask for a password when you wake your system, you can do that as well and you don’t need to enable a screensaver for it.

Open the Settings app and go to the Display group of settings. Select the Power & Sleep tab. Scroll down to the Power option and select when your system should sleep when it’s on battery, and when it’s plugged it.

Next, go to the Accounts group of settings. Select the Sign-in Options tab. Under the Require Sign-in section, select ‘When PC wakes from sleep’.

Many Windows 10 systems take a long time to come out of sleep, and some end up stuck on a blank screen. This has been a recurring problem with Windows 10 since day which is why the auto-lock option is more suitable.