How to Turn Off Sleep Mode in Windows 11 & 10 (Lid, Hibernate, powercfg)

To turn off sleep mode in Windows 11, open Settings > System > Power & battery (just Power on a desktop), expand the screen and sleep timeouts, and set Make my device sleep after to Never for both "plugged in" and "on battery". On Windows 10 the same switches are in Settings > System > Power & sleep. To do it in one line, run powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0 in Terminal. Here is the part most guides skip: setting sleep to Never does not stop a laptop sleeping when you close the lid, and it does not stop hibernation or a separate screen timeout. Those are three more settings, and this page covers each one, plus how to keep the PC awake only when you need it.

Jake's friend Ethan runs overnight video renders for a small wedding studio. Twice in one month he came back in the morning to find a render frozen at 40 percent, because the PC had gone to sleep at 2 a.m. He had already set sleep to Never. The culprit the first time was hibernation, which still had its own timer, and the second time was a laptop he used as a backup render box, which slept the moment he closed its lid to save desk space. At Jake's shop they spent fifteen minutes going through every setting that can put Windows to sleep, and the renders have finished on time ever since. That is the checklist this page gives you: every way to turn sleep off, partly off, or off only when it matters, on Windows 11 and Windows 10.

Sleep is a useful feature: it saves power, protects a laptop battery, and lets you pick up exactly where you left off. Turning it off is the right call for some jobs and the wrong call for others, so this page also shows the middle ground: longer timeouts, keep-awake-while-plugged-in, and tools that hold the PC awake for a single task and then let it sleep normally.

Every setting that can put Windows to sleep

Windows does not have one sleep switch. It has several timers and triggers, and any of them can send the PC to sleep or hibernation. This table is the full list; the sections below walk through each.

If you only change the first row, the PC will still sleep when the lid closes, when hibernation's timer runs out, or when a company policy says so. That is why "I set it to Never and it still sleeps" is such a common complaint.

Turn off sleep in Windows 11 Settings

1. Press Windows + I to open Settings, or type ms-settings:powersleep into the Run box (Windows + R).
2. Go to System > Power & battery. On a desktop PC without a battery, the page is called Power.
3. Expand Screen, sleep, & hibernate timeouts (called Screen and sleep on older Windows 11 versions).
4. Set Make my device sleep after to Never. On a laptop there are two drop-downs or two rows: one for plugged in and one for on battery. Set the one you need, or both.
5. If you see Make my device hibernate after, set that to Never too.
6. Optionally set Turn my screen off after. Leaving the screen timeout at 5 or 10 minutes is fine; the PC keeps working with the screen off.

The change applies immediately, with no restart. To check it worked, leave the PC idle longer than your old timeout; it should still be running, and downloads, renders or remote sessions should carry on.

A good everyday compromise on laptops is Never when plugged in and 15 to 30 minutes on battery. The machine stays awake at your desk, and if you forget it in a bag, sleep still saves the battery.

Turn off sleep in Windows 10

1. Open Settings with Windows + I.
2. Go to System > Power & sleep.
3. Under Sleep, set When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after to Never.
4. On a laptop, also set On battery power, PC goes to sleep after if you want it never to sleep on battery.
5. Click Additional power settings on the right (or at the bottom) to reach Control Panel for the lid, power button and hibernate settings covered below.

Windows 10 reached end of support in October 2025 for most users, but the power settings still work exactly as described, and they are the same on PCs enrolled in Extended Security Updates.

The Control Panel route (both versions)

Control Panel's Power Options still exist on Windows 11 and are the only place for some settings. The fastest way in is Windows + R, type powercfg.cpl, and press Enter.

1. Next to your active plan (usually Balanced), click Change plan settings.
2. Set Put the computer to sleep to Never for Plugged in and, on laptops, On battery.
3. Click Save changes.
4. Click Change advanced power settings to open the full list, where Sleep expands into Sleep after, Allow hybrid sleep, Hibernate after and Allow wake timers.

Settings and Control Panel edit the same plan, so a change in one shows up in the other. If they ever disagree, it usually means a policy is controlling the value; see the section on work PCs below.

Turn off sleep with a command (powercfg)

The powercfg tool changes every power setting from Terminal, Command Prompt or PowerShell. It is quicker than clicking, it can be scripted, and it works on PCs where the Settings page is hard to reach. Open Terminal (right-click Start > Terminal) and run:

"ac" means plugged in and "dc" means on battery. A value of 0 means Never. The /change commands apply to your current power plan, and do not need an administrator Terminal; /hibernate and /requests do.

To set the lid action from the command line, which is handy for a laptop used as a small server, use:

powercfg /setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_BUTTONS LIDACTION 0
powercfg /setactive SCHEME_CURRENT

The value 0 means Do nothing, 1 Sleep, 2 Hibernate and 3 Shut down. Use /setdcvalueindex instead for the on-battery value. The second command reapplies the plan so the change takes effect right away.

Keep a laptop awake with the lid closed

This is the setting behind most "it still sleeps" stories. It lives only in Control Panel:

1. Press Windows + R, type powercfg.cpl, and press Enter.
2. Click Choose what closing the lid does on the left.
3. Next to When I close the lid, set Plugged in to Do nothing. Leave On battery at Sleep unless you have a specific reason.
4. Click Save changes.

Now you can close the lid and use the laptop with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, or leave it closed on a shelf running downloads. Two cautions. First, a closed laptop runs hotter, because many models vent heat partly through the keyboard area; keep it on a hard surface with the vents clear, and do not put a closed, running laptop into a bag. Second, if On battery is also set to Do nothing and the charger is unplugged, the laptop will keep running in the bag until the battery empties. Ethan learned the first lesson when his backup render laptop got noticeably warm on a fabric couch; it now sits on a stand.

If Choose what closing the lid does is missing, the PC either has no lid, such as a desktop or an all-in-one, or the display driver is a generic one. Install the manufacturer's graphics and chipset drivers, and the option usually returns.

Change what the power and sleep buttons do

On the same Control Panel page, Choose what the power buttons do sets three actions:

• When I press the power button: Do nothing, Sleep, Hibernate, Shut down, or Turn off the display. On many laptops the default is Sleep; desktops often default to Shut down.
• When I press the sleep button: appears on keyboards with a dedicated sleep key. Set it to Do nothing if the key is easy to hit by accident.
• When I close the lid: covered above.

Setting the power button to Turn off the display is a smart choice for shared offices: a quick press blanks the screen without stopping anything running, and a key press brings it back. Holding the power button for several seconds still forces the PC off whatever this setting says, which is your escape route if Windows freezes.

Turn off hibernation too

Hibernation saves everything in memory to a file on the drive and powers the PC off completely. Many laptops are set to hibernate after a few hours of sleep, and some have a separate hibernate timer that runs even when sleep is Never. To stop it:

1. In Settings, set Make my device hibernate after to Never if it is shown.
2. Otherwise open powercfg.cpl, click Change plan settings, then Change advanced power settings.
3. Expand Sleep > Hibernate after and set both values to 0 or Never.

To disable hibernation entirely, run powercfg /hibernate off in an administrator Terminal. That deletes the hibernation file, hiberfil.sys, which frees several gigabytes of space on small drives. It also turns off Fast Startup, which relies on the same file, so cold boots take a few seconds longer. Our guide to Fast Startup explains that trade-off. Run powercfg /hibernate on to bring it back.

On laptops, think twice before disabling hibernation. It is what saves your open work when the battery runs critically low. Turning off the timer while keeping hibernation available is usually the better choice.

Sleep, hibernate, hybrid sleep and shutdown compared

It helps to know exactly what each state does before deciding which to switch off.

The last row matters most for this page. If your goal is "keep my download or render running", you only need to stop sleep and hibernate; letting the screen turn off is harmless and saves power and screen wear. Our guide to hybrid sleep covers that option in detail.

Modern Standby: why newer laptops sleep differently

Most laptops sold in the last several years use Modern Standby (also called S0 low power idle) instead of classic sleep (S3). It works like a phone: when the screen turns off, the PC drops into a very low power state but can wake briefly to fetch mail, sync files and install updates. To see which your PC uses, run powercfg /a. If the output lists Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected or Network Disconnected, you have Modern Standby; if it lists Standby (S3), you have classic sleep.

Modern Standby has two side effects worth knowing. First, on some models the screen timeout and the sleep timeout are effectively linked: when the screen turns off, the PC enters standby soon after, even if sleep is set to a longer value. If downloads stop when the screen goes dark, set Turn my screen off after to match the sleep value, or to Never, while the job runs. Second, a laptop in Modern Standby inside a bag can wake for updates and get warm. If that happens, change Network connectivity in Standby under Advanced power settings > Sleep (where shown) to Disable, or set the lid action to Hibernate on battery.

Some guides suggest disabling Modern Standby with a registry value called PlatformAoAcOverride. That only helps if the firmware also supports classic S3 sleep, which many current laptops do not; on those, the change can leave the PC with no working sleep at all. It is not worth it for the goal of keeping a PC awake, which the settings above already achieve safely.

Keep the PC awake for one job, then sleep normally

Often you do not want sleep off forever, only for the next three hours. Changing settings and remembering to change them back is error-prone. Better options:

PowerToys Awake

Microsoft's free PowerToys includes Awake, a small tool that keeps the PC awake without touching your power plan. Install PowerToys from the Microsoft Store or with winget install Microsoft.PowerToys, turn on Awake, and choose Keep awake indefinitely, Keep awake for a time interval or Keep awake until expiration. There is an option to keep the screen on too. When you turn Awake off or the time runs out, your normal sleep settings return. This is what Ethan uses now: Awake for the length of the render, normal sleep the rest of the time.

Apps that keep the PC awake on their own

Well-behaved apps tell Windows not to sleep while they work. Video players do this during playback, presentation apps during a slideshow, and many download managers, backup tools and game launchers during transfers. If sleep interrupts a download, check the app's settings for an option such as "prevent sleep while downloading". Run powercfg /requests in an administrator Terminal during the job to see whether the app is actually asking; if it is listed under SYSTEM or EXECUTION, Windows will stay awake for it.

Presentation settings and focus

For talks and video calls, presenting from PowerPoint or sharing a screen in Teams already holds sleep off. On Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise laptops, the old Windows Mobility Center (Windows + X) also has Presentation settings, which keeps the PC awake and silences notifications until you turn it off.

Turn sleep off on a schedule

Some people want sleep off during working hours and on at night, or the reverse for overnight jobs. Windows has no built-in schedule for power settings, but Task Scheduler and the powercfg commands make one easily:

1. Open Task Scheduler from Start.
2. Click Create Basic Task, name it Sleep off at 8 PM, choose Daily, and set the time.
3. For the action, choose Start a program, enter powercfg as the program, and /change standby-timeout-ac 0 as the argument.
4. Create a second task, Sleep on at 7 AM, with the argument /change standby-timeout-ac 30.

The same approach handles a nightly shutdown; our guide to scheduling an automatic shutdown walks through it.

Sleep set to Never but the PC still sleeps? Fixes in order

Work down this list; each item is a real cause we see often, roughly from most to least common.

1. The lid closed. Set When I close the lid to Do nothing for Plugged in.
2. Hibernate has its own timer. Set Hibernate after to Never, in Settings or Advanced power settings.
3. You set only one power source. On laptops, check both Plugged in and On battery. A laptop running on battery uses the battery timer even at your desk if the charger is loose.
4. A different power plan is active. Each plan has its own timers. Open powercfg.cpl and check which plan is selected, or run powercfg /getactivescheme.
5. The manufacturer's power app overrides Windows. Tools such as Lenovo Vantage, Dell Power Manager, HP Smart, MyASUS and similar can apply their own modes. Check their battery or power settings, or set them to follow Windows.
6. Modern Standby linked to the screen timeout. Set Turn my screen off after to match or to Never while the job runs.
7. Company policy. On a work PC, IT may enforce sleep. Run gpresult /r or check Settings for "Some settings are managed by your organization".
8. The critical battery action. If the battery drops to the critical level, Windows hibernates or shuts down regardless. Plug in for long jobs.
9. Corrupt power plan. Run powercfg -restoredefaultschemes in an administrator Terminal to reset all plans, then set sleep to Never again.
10. The screen saver looks like sleep. A blank screen saver can be mistaken for sleep. Check screen saver settings and set it to None if it confuses you.

If the PC truly shuts off rather than sleeping, the cause may be heat or the power supply instead of a setting. Look in Event Viewer under Windows Logs > System for Kernel-Power 41 events, which record unexpected power loss, and check temperatures and dust.

The opposite problem: the PC wakes up by itself

Once sleep works the way you want, the next annoyance is a PC that wakes itself at 3 a.m. The fixes:

• Run powercfg /lastwake to see what woke it last time, and powercfg /waketimers (admin) to see scheduled wakes.
• Run powercfg /devicequery wake_armed to list devices allowed to wake the PC, usually the mouse, keyboard and network adapter. To stop one, open Device Manager, open the device's Properties > Power Management, and clear Allow this device to wake the computer.
• Set Allow wake timers under Advanced power settings > Sleep to Disable or Important wake timers only.
• Windows Update maintenance can wake the PC to install updates. Set active hours, or turn off automatic maintenance waking under Control Panel > Security and Maintenance > Maintenance > Change maintenance settings.

Our guide to stopping Windows waking itself up covers the Update Orchestrator wake timer in detail.

Sleep is missing or grayed out

If you cannot find Sleep at all, either in the Power menu or the settings, the cause is usually a missing driver or a setting that hides it. Check powercfg /a: if it reports that standby is not available because the graphics driver does not support it, install the PC maker's display driver instead of Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. If sleep is supported but missing from the Power menu, turn it back on under powercfg.cpl > Choose what the power buttons do > Change settings that are currently unavailable > Sleep. Our guide to a missing Sleep option covers both cases, and the same page has a link for bringing back a missing Hibernate option.

Grayed-out power settings almost always mean a policy is in control. On a home PC, that can be left over from an old tweak tool or a former work enrollment. Check gpedit.msc (Pro and above) under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Sleep Settings, and set any configured sleep policies back to Not Configured.

Should a laptop ever have sleep turned off?

Yes, sometimes, but think about the battery. Sleep exists to save power when you walk away. A laptop that never sleeps on battery will drain completely if you forget it, and repeated full drains are hard on lithium-ion cells. A laptop that never sleeps on the charger is fine, but sits at 100 percent charge for long periods, which also ages the battery.

Good practice for a laptop that must stay awake for long periods:

• Set sleep to Never only for Plugged in, and keep a timeout for On battery.
• Turn on the manufacturer's battery charge limit (often 80 percent) if your laptop has one, or Windows 11's smart charging where supported.
• Keep vents clear, especially with the lid closed.
• Check the battery's condition every few months with a battery report.

Desktops, home servers and media PCs

For a desktop that hosts files, game servers, Plex or a home automation hub, the cleanest setup is sleep Never, hibernate Never, screen off after 10 minutes, and the power button set to Shut down. That keeps services reachable while the monitor rests. If you want the desktop to sleep but still reach it remotely, enable Wake on LAN: in Device Manager, open the network adapter's Power Management tab, check Allow this device to wake the computer and Only allow a magic packet to wake the computer, and turn on Wake on LAN in the PC's firmware settings. A wake-on-LAN app on your phone then wakes the PC before you connect.

A desktop on all day uses noticeably more electricity than one that sleeps. Most modern desktops idle at somewhere between 30 and 80 watts, so 24 hours a day adds up over a year. If the PC only needs to be awake for nightly jobs, a schedule, as above, gets you most of the benefit for a fraction of the cost.

Remote Desktop and remote access

A PC that sleeps cannot accept a Remote Desktop connection, so remote workers often switch sleep off on their office machine. That works, but combine it with a screen timeout and a lock: set Turn my screen off after to a few minutes and make sure the PC requires sign-in after the screen turns off. Under Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options, set If you've been away, when should Windows require you to sign in again? to When PC wakes up from sleep or a short time. Dynamic Lock adds an automatic lock when your phone walks away with you. A PC that never sleeps and never locks is an open door to anyone in the office.

Games, downloads and streaming

Big game downloads are the most common reason people search for this topic. Steam, the Xbox app, Epic and Battle.net generally prevent sleep while they actively download, but not always while they are queued, verifying files or waiting between files. For a long overnight download, use PowerToys Awake or set sleep to Never for the night, and set the screen to turn off. For game streaming hosts, such as a PC that streams to a TV or handheld, set sleep to Never while plugged in and enable Wake on LAN if your streaming app supports waking the host.

Power plans and power modes

Windows 11 replaces most of the old plans with a single plan and a Power mode slider in Settings > System > Power & battery: Best power efficiency, Balanced and Best performance. The power mode changes how hard the processor works; it does not change sleep timers. Sleep timers belong to the plan, which is usually Balanced.

If you created extra plans on Windows 10, or your PC maker installed one, each plan keeps its own sleep values. Switching plans can quietly bring sleep back. Our guide to switching power plans shows how to see and change the active one. The Ultimate Performance plan, available on Pro for Workstations and by command on other editions, sets sleep to Never by design and is meant for workstations, not laptops.

Energy saver and battery saver

Windows 11's Energy saver (the successor to Battery saver) reduces background activity and screen brightness, and it turns on automatically below a battery level you choose. It does not change the sleep timer, but it can pause background downloads and sync. If a long download stalls on battery, check whether Energy saver kicked in, under Settings > System > Power & battery. On Windows 10, the same applies to Battery saver.

You can turn Energy saver off for the length of a job from Quick Settings (Windows + A), or raise or lower the level at which it starts automatically. On desktops, Windows 11 also lets you switch Energy saver on manually to cut background work, which is useful on a quiet night but counterproductive while a large download runs. The rule of thumb: for long transfers, plug in and keep Energy saver off; for a laptop you want to stretch through a flight, leave it on and accept slower syncing.

Screen timeout vs sleep: keep them separate

Many people turn off sleep when what really bothers them is the screen going dark while they read or follow a recipe. In that case, leave sleep alone and lengthen only Turn my screen off after. The opposite is also common: someone wants a download to finish but sets the screen to Never and wonders why the monitor stays lit all night. Treat them as two separate decisions:

• Screen timeout: how long before the display goes dark. Affects comfort and power, not running work.
• Sleep timeout: how long before the whole PC pauses. Affects running work.

For reading and recipes, lengthen the screen timeout. For downloads and renders, turn off sleep and keep a short screen timeout.

Lock screen timeout is a separate setting

When the PC is locked, Windows turns the screen off after about a minute by default, regardless of your normal screen timeout. That is separate from sleep and does not stop downloads. If you want the lock screen to stay lit longer, for example to show a slideshow, the hidden Console lock display off timeout setting controls it. It appears under Advanced power settings > Display once enabled with a registry change (the Attributes value under the matching PowerSettings key set to 2). Most people never need this, but it explains why a locked PC goes dark quickly even with screen timeout set to Never.

How to confirm sleep is really off

1. Run powercfg /q SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP STANDBYIDLE. The current AC and DC power setting index values show the sleep timeout in seconds; 0x00000000 means Never.
2. Run powercfg /q SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_SLEEP HIBERNATEIDLE for the hibernate timer.
3. Run powercfg /q SCHEME_CURRENT SUB_BUTTONS LIDACTION for the lid action, where 0 is Do nothing.
4. Leave the PC idle beyond the old timeout and check it is still running.
5. Next morning, run powercfg /sleepstudy (on Modern Standby PCs) to produce a report of every standby session overnight.

Seeing the values directly removes any guessing about which page or plan Windows is using.

Recommended settings for common situations

Displays, kiosks and digital signage

A PC driving a lobby screen, a shop menu board or a classroom display needs both sleep and screen timeout set to Never. Also set the lock screen not to appear after idle (Settings > Accounts > Sign-in options), turn off the screen saver, and disable automatic restart outside active hours so Windows Update does not reboot mid-day. For a dedicated single-app display, Windows' kiosk mode (assigned access, under Settings > Accounts > Other users) is the managed way to run one app full screen without these settings being changed by passers-by.

Power cuts, UPS units and safe shutdowns

Turning off sleep on a desktop means it is running when the power fails. If your area has outages, a small UPS (uninterruptible power supply) with a USB cable lets Windows see it as a battery. The UPS then appears in Power Options with its own battery settings, and Windows can hibernate or shut down cleanly when the UPS runs low. Keep the critical action set to Hibernate or Shut down so unsaved work survives.

Many UPS makers also supply their own monitoring app, which can shut down several PCs on a network or send an alert to your phone when the mains power fails. Either way, test it once: unplug the UPS from the wall with the PC running and confirm that Windows reacts the way you expect before a real outage arrives. A UPS battery typically needs replacing every few years, and the monitoring app or the UPS's own indicator will tell you when.

Why Windows sleeps by default

Windows ships with sleep turned on because most PCs spend most of their day idle, and sleep cuts that idle power to a small fraction. Across millions of PCs, that is a large amount of electricity, and on a laptop it is the difference between a battery that lasts a day and one that is empty when you open the lid. Microsoft's defaults, typically around 5 to 10 minutes for the screen and 15 to 30 minutes for sleep, are tuned for that average user. Changing them is perfectly normal; the point of this page is to change exactly the ones you need, and no more.

Security considerations

A PC that never sleeps is also a PC that stays signed in. If anyone else can walk up to it, pair sleep Never with a short screen timeout and a sign-in requirement, or lock it with Windows + L whenever you step away. Encryption is another consideration: BitLocker and Device Encryption protect data when the PC is fully off or hibernated, not while it is running and unlocked. For laptops that travel, keeping hibernation on for the lid on battery is the safer choice.

For IT admins: managing sleep across devices

Group Policy. Under Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > System > Power Management > Sleep Settings, the policies Specify the system sleep timeout (plugged in) and (on battery) set the idle timer; 0 means never. Specify the system hibernate timeout, Allow standby states (S1-S3) when sleeping, and the Button Settings policies for the lid and power button sit alongside. Specify the unattended sleep timeout covers machines left at the sign-in screen.

Intune. The Power policy CSP exposes the same values (for example the standby and hibernate timeouts and lid actions) in the settings catalog. Deploy separate profiles for kiosks, shared PCs and laptops rather than one blanket "never sleep" rule, which wastes power and battery life fleet-wide.

Scripting and auditing. powercfg /export and /import move a configured plan between machines, and powercfg /requestsoverride can stop a misbehaving process from holding a PC awake. powercfg /energy produces a report of common power problems, and /sleepstudy shows standby drain on Modern Standby devices. For servers and VDI, sleep is usually disabled by image and confirmed with powercfg /q in a compliance script.

Turning off sleep mode: frequently asked questions

Ethan's renders have finished on time every night since that afternoon at Jake's shop, and the fix was not one setting but four: sleep Never on the charger, hibernate Never, the lid set to Do nothing, and PowerToys Awake for the long jobs so the PC still sleeps on quiet days. Windows puts PCs to sleep for good reasons, and the trick is not to fight it everywhere, only where it gets in the way. Change the timers you need, leave the battery protections in place, and your PC will stay awake exactly as long as your work does.

Revision note. Written October 2, 2026, rewriting our 2016 guide for Windows 11 with lid, hibernate and Modern Standby fixes. May your downloads always finish.