How do I get my screensavers to start? Thanks for your help. I know this one should be easy but I don’t know the command.
Most users do not need a screensaver. By default the system automatically blanks the screen and locks it after a user configurable time when idle. Thus the screen is blank and does not benefit from a screensaver.
The system also is, by default, designed to suspend with 15 minutes idle on a new fedora installation.
In order to have a screensaver active the system would need to keep the graphics active even though potentially having a locked screen. Doing so goes contrary to the general premise of saving as much power as possible, so using a screensaver goes against the idea of conserving power.
While I understand the power saving aspect of not wanting screensavers in 2026, I think that OLED monitors present a new [again] problem. We’ve had LCD monitors for so long, we forgot about CRT burn in. But, OLEDs are subject to burn in. You might say, “let it go to sleep”, but the problem is then that the OLED wants to do a pixel refresh when the monitor sleeps. That puts more wear on the useful life of the monitor.
Anyhow, that was just a rather minor rant about why I don’t agree that screensavers are unnecessary in 2026.
Back to OP’s question:
@penguinista :
- Do you have an OLED monitor (or CRT
)? If not, is there a reason why you want a screensaver vs. monitor sleep? - If you do need a screensaver, are you using Gnome, KDE, or another DE? I have found a way on KDE to do a “screensaver”-esque (basically, fully black screen for a while to prevent my OLED from going to sleep and running a pixel refresh every time). If you’re running KDE, I can share that with you.
I have been running soon 5 years OLED laptop and also external OLED screen and no burn at all. The thing is yes it can burn, but it needs lots of work to actually burn. So on that note screensagvers are windows XP era no need to come back at all
I use xscreensaver. First you would need to install it and then go to the command line and do xscreensaver-settings and then you can set it up the way you like it. I also remember having to disable the default screensaver, whatever that was called…