Using Powercfg to Change a Setting in the Current Power Scheme

Written by Barry Dysert (last updated June 22, 2020)

As you may know, your computer can run under a variety of different power schemes. A power scheme is a collection of hardware and system settings that manage how your computer uses power. They are typically used the most with laptops, where it's more crucial to tradeoff between performance and battery preservation. Even a desktop machine can use them, though. There are three schemes that come with Windows by default. They are Balanced, High Performance, and Power Saver, and you can create others if none of these suits you.

There is a command utility in Windows called Powercfg, which provides a great deal of control over your power schemes. (You can use the GUI for much of this functionality, too, but a lot of people prefer using the command line.) Powercfg takes numerous switches to tell it what you want to do regarding your power schemes. To see all of the switches available to Powercfg, invoke it with the "-HELP" (or "-?") switch.

For this tip we want to change a value in the current power scheme. First, we'll get a list of the available power schemes (covered under another tip). (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. Powercfg -list.

The way to change a value is to use the "-CHANGE" (or "-X") switch. The format of the command is

Powercfg -change <setting> <value>

Where <value> is a number of minutes, and <setting> is one of the following:

-monitor-timeout-ac
-monitor-timeout-dc
-disk-timeout-ac
-disk-timeout-dc
-standby-timeout-ac
-standby-timeout-dc
-hibernate-timeout-ac
-hibernate-timeout-dc

So, for example, if you wanted to set the monitor idle timeout value to 5 minutes when on AC power, the command would be:

Powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac 5

 This tip (13477) applies to Windows 7, 8, and 10.

Author Bio

Barry Dysert

Barry has been a computer professional for over 35 years, working in different positions such as technical team leader, project manager, and software developer. He is currently a software engineer with an emphasis on developing custom applications under Microsoft Windows. When not working with Windows or writing Tips, Barry is an amateur writer. His first non-fiction book is titled "A Chronological Commentary of Revelation." ...

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