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Accepted
Ionică Bizău
Asked: 2020-07-10 01:20:13 +0800 CST

How to (re)set the idle time?

  • 772

I use an external monitor that has an audio output and use it for my audio system. However, if the desktop enters in sleep mode, it automatically switches to the laptop speakers.

I want to use pacmd list-sink-inputs | grep 'RUNNING' to check every 20 seconds if sound is playing, and if so reset the idle time automatically.

Currently I use caffeine, but that disables idling completely.

How can I prevent the computer going to sleep when sound is playing? How can I reset the idle time from the command line?

sound command-line suspend alsa idle

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Here is what I came up with. It uses caffeinate command from caffeine package which you are already using.

    #!/bin/bash
while true
do
    pacmd list-sink-inputs | grep 'RUNNING' > /dev/null
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]
    then
      caffeinate sleep 1
    fi
    sleep 20
done

    Another solution using xdotool. If something was playing it slightly moves the mouse without you noticing and leaves it where it was.

    #!/bin/bash
while true
do
    pacmd list-sink-inputs | grep 'RUNNING' > /dev/null
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]
    then
        for ANGLE in 0 90 180 270
        do
            xdotool mousemove_relative --polar $ANGLE 0.1
        done
    fi
    sleep 20
done

    Just make sure you've got xdotool installed:

    sudo apt install xdotool
    • 4