How to tell if screensaver is temporarily disabled?

Question

Say, when a YouTube video is played via Google Chrome browser, or any video/sound in a Windows Media Player, both temporarily disable a screensaver if one is set up in a user's control panel. This happens only for the duration of the video being played or until the playback is paused.

Is there any way to know that screensaver (and power saving) was disabled in such a situation?

PS. I'm coding with C++.

@MatsPetersson: My idea was to use SPI_GETSCREENSAVEACTIVE, but that doesn't seem to do the trick... — c00000fd, Jul 30 '13 at 09:18
When the screen saver timeout expires the system sends a [`WM_SYSCOMMAND`](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms646360.aspx) (with `SC_SCREENSAVE`) to all top level windows. To disable the screen saver an application typically responds to this message. I don't know of a way to discover this, other than bruteforcing it by sending a message to all top level windows. — IInspectable, Jul 30 '13 at 10:07

score -1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 31 '13 at 00:09

-1

There is a registry value that will disable the screensaverUser.

The key is at: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop

Its name is: ScreenSaveActive

The key type is: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)

To disable screen saver set the value to 0, when your application is done set it back to 1

If the key is not there just create one. To edit the registry through C++ there are a few steps.

Open the registry : RegOpenKeyEx
Query the value : RegQueryValueEx

/* do something with value*/
Set the value back : RegSetValueEx
close the registry : RegCloseKey

Hope this helps

answered Jul 31 '13 at 00:09

Jacob.Kincaid

92
5

`HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Control Panel\Desktop` doesn't exist on my Windows 8. – c00000fd Jul 31 '13 at 00:19
Then you just need to create it. – Jacob.Kincaid Jul 31 '13 at 17:38
Not all windows registry keys will be there. Some will never be made unless explicitly specified – Jacob.Kincaid Jul 31 '13 at 17:39
Hmm. I'm sorry I'm not following you. How does it apply to my original question? – c00000fd Aug 01 '13 at 03:57
You can check the registry to see if the screensaver and other power settings are enabled or not – Jacob.Kincaid Aug 06 '13 at 22:12

How to tell if screensaver is temporarily disabled?

1 Answers1