Disable automatic screen lock on Ubuntu Desktop

My little piece of advice would be never to disable this feature if your device is not in a secure location. Whenever you leave your device unattended, the best practice is to lock the screen of your DEVICE to prevent other people from using your desktop, installing malware, or accessing your files. If you sometimes forget to lock your screen, you may wish to have your computer’s screen lock automatically after a specific period of time. This will help prevent unauthorized access, thereby securing your device when it is not in use.

On how to disable screen lock on Windows, see the following guides. How to disable Lock Screen on Windows 10 via Local Group Policy Editor, and how to disable Lock Screen on Windows 10 via Registry Editor, install, remove, and upgrade packages in Ubuntu, and how to remove your login password from the Sign-in Screen (lock screen) and re-enable Sign-in Screen.

Screen lock might be annoying if you walk away from your PC and you are asked to logon again. If this is you concern, please follow the steps below to have it disabled. Refer to the last paragraph on how this is done on Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS

How to disable automatic screen lock on Ubuntu

Note: By default, the blank screen display and automatic screen lock are activated by default. If disabled previously, you can enable the automatic screen lock whenever you are idle for a specific period of time. This is particularly useful if you leave your device unattended in an unsecured environment. Here is an old article on to disable automatic screen lock in Ubuntu Linux.

Method 1

On the desktop, navigate to the upper-right corner of the screen, click the arrow icon to expand the desktop options and then click the Settings icon.

Alternatively, you can click on the “Activities” overview, and type “Settings” or “Power“. From the settings panel, click Power to open the panel

This will open up the Power Panel
– Choose Never! But If you do not want to completely turn it off, you can change the value of the blank screen from the drop-down list.

Method 2

You could also do this from the Privacy settings. Open Settings. There, you can select the Privacy settings tab.

When clicked, a modal window will open. Now click on the Screen Lock option.

There you can toggle Automatic Screen Lock on/off, set a time for locking the screen or set the blank screen to Never.

Method 3: Using dconf Editor

Note: You can also disable the blank screen from the command line and also from the “dconf Editor“. To have the dconf Editor installed,
– Launch the Ubuntu Software,

This will open the Software Catalog as shown below
– Search for and install dconf Editor and
– Click on Install to have it installed.

You will be required to authentication before the installation can continue. Enter your password and click on Authenticate as shown below.

Note: When using the dconf Editor for editing your settings, please be extremely careful as some options may break your applications.

Next, launch the dconf Editor, 
- Navigate through the following path ===> org/gnome/desktop/session, and 
- Change the value of idle-delay. 

Also disable ‘Use default value’ switch. Please follow up from here 🙂

To enable the automatic screen lock again, please repeat this process and toggle the switch from Off to ON, and set a reasonable value for the Blank Screen Delay.

Method 4: Disable Automatic Lock on Ubuntu

On how to disable blank screen (automatic screen lock) on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, please follow the steps below.
– Launch the system’s settings as shown below and
– Click on Brightness & Lock

This will open up the Brightness & Lock modal window, click on Never. This should fix you screen from automatically locking after a period of inactivity.

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.