How to auto-lock the device after a set time of inactivity, excluding dynamic lock?

Question

How to auto-lock the device after a set time of inactivity, excluding dynamic lock.

Reasons for the question,

1. Some applications or processes may not behave well with sleep mode. They might not properly pause or resume, leading to performance issues or errors when the laptop wakes up.
2. I have experienced a network connectivity issue while training a deep learning model in Google Colab, after I put it into sleep mode.

Necessity solution

I would like to just lock the device without interrupting the background running task and an network connectivity issue, and also to protect my PC from others when I left it for a while.

For example, I would like to lock the device with the below method.

Answer 1

Hello RinshanKolayil

Welcome to the Microsoft Community.

To auto-lock your device after a set time of inactivity without putting it to sleep (which could interrupt background tasks like your deep learning model training in Google Colab), you can adjust your screen saver settings to require a password on resume. This method will lock your device after the screen saver starts, without affecting any running processes or network connectivity.

Here's how you can set it up in Windows:

1. Open the Start menu and go to Settings.
2. Click on Personalization.
3. Select Lock screen on the sidebar.
4. Scroll down to find Screen saver settings at the bottom of the page.
5. In the Screen Saver Settings window, you can choose a screen saver from the drop-down menu or select None if you don’t want a visual screen saver.
6. Check the box that says On resume, display logon screen.
7. Set the Wait time to the desired amount of time of inactivity before your device locks.
8. Click Apply and then OK.

After these settings are applied, once the set time of inactivity has passed, your screen saver will activate, and when it resumes, you will be prompted to enter your password, effectively locking your device without entering sleep mode.

Best Regards

Patch - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist