If Applications Keep Windows Awake, you can Override their Requests

Table of Contents

Backstory

I've previously written a blog post on how to diagnose why Windows is keeping your display on. In a nutshell, Windows will only stay awake (or keep your monitor display on) if something tells it to (or if your power settings are configured to).

While I determined how to identify what is creating wake events, I only recently learned that there is a way to override these wake requests.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife's monitor remained on while her computer was locked. Sometimes she leaves Youtube up in a browser, or has notifications display on the lock screen, so I ignored it. But seeing it happen consistently, I decided to look into it further. I eventually discovered that Adobe Illustrator was the culprit. And when I searched for more information on this, I found a post in the Adobe Community forum with guidance on overriding wake requests.[1] I have summarized the steps here and provided some additional guidance.

Override Wake Requests

The Powershell commands from my previous article are still needed here. You can run powercfg /requests in an Adminstrative Powershell terminal to see what is keeping Windows awake. Note that this only seems to work for displaying requests that have happened since the last boot cycle. If you restart your computer and run this command, it will likely return nothing.

If this returns a result, note the executable file listed. We can then, quite simply, override this request with a single Powershell command. If the application in question was creative cloud.exe, this would be the solution:

powercfg /requestsoverride process "creative cloud.exe"

And then, you can view your active overrides with the following command:

powercfg /requestsoverride

Reapply as needed

Unfortunately, some of the Adobe products have a habit of reinstalling their wake timers. So you would notice this happening again, see it's the same application, and have to run that requestsoverride command again. But there's a way to proactively address this cat and mouse game.

You can create a scheduled task in Windows to re-run this command on a regular interval. Here are the general steps, mostly adapted from the forum sources mentioned.

  1. Open Task Scheduler in Windows.
  2. Click "Create Task" on the right side of the window, in the Actions panel. (This is different than "Create Basic Task.")
  3. On the General tab, check "Run with highest privileges."
  4. In the Triggers tab, click the New button and set up an "on a schedule" trigger. You can add more than one trigger, and there is no "right answer" on how to do this - it will depend on how aggressively your application is creating wake requests.
  5. In the Actions tab, click New, and set up the "Start a program" action. The program to run is "C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe", and in the arguments type requestsoverride process "creative cloud.exe" display system (replacing "creative cloud.exe" with your application).
  6. Optionally, in the Settings tab, check "Run as soon as possible after scheduled start is missed." This would allow for a trigger normally set to run at 5pm daily to run later if your computer was turned off at 5pm.

This is a pretty tedious process, but hopefully it's "set it and forget it," until you find another application that prevents Windows from sleeping.

Summary / TL;DR

If your Windows computer is not going to sleep due to an application's wake request, you can create an override with powercfg /requestsoverride. You can also create a scheduled task to reapply this override if required.

Commentary

If you have any thoughts on this article that you would like to share, please send me an email at [email protected] and I will get back to you. If new information is provided, I will update the article accordingly.

  1. The solutions I have summarized in this article come from "Nick22848596i4l5" and "MRMAdmin" on the Adobe Community forum. If the above link ever goes down, there is a wayback machine capture of this Adobe Community forum thread, and I have also archived it myself and can share if needed. ↩