How to put monitor on standby and not let it wake up

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I have 3 monitors, but I don't need them all turned on all the time. I can just shut them down with power button, but I want to use their standby mode, like Windows does when we let PC idle for a while - it shuts down monitors, HDD, etc.

But of course, I wanna keep using PC and let just that monitor on standby. Others must remain on and that one doesn't wake up even with me using PC.

Is it possible to do that? It would be great to have a shortcut like Winkey+1, 2, 3 etc to shut down and wake up each monitor.

An existing app with this feature is not likely to exist, but is there a Windows API function that can control monitor state, for each monitor in a MultiMonitor system?

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windowswinapiwindows-7multiple-monitorsstandby
When using Windows' power-saving feature to turn off a monitor, input activity (mouse, keyboard, touch) would make it turn on again. – Sheng Jiang 蒋晟
That's what I'm saying. I wanna put only 1 of 3 monitors in standby, and keep it this way even while using PC. – Hikari

3 Answers

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The display control panel applet calls SetDisplayConfig to start or stop forced projection on a particular target

You can probably use MS Detours or some other API hooking tool to inspect the usage pattern of the API while using the applet to adjust display settings.

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You'll want to try Display Fusion. You should be able to do what you're asking for using Monitor configurations.

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I know I'm late on this but use DDC to control your display. You can easily create hotkeys that send a command via DDC to the display to turn-off. This would be equivalent to turning off the display using the button. Works like a charm for me. The only trick is that DDC command specs vary across monitor manufacturers but its not hard to find the right codes to send with the help of google.

Ready made tools also exist for this; search for anything that is related to DDC or EDID and you should find.

Be aware though that this does not remove the display from Windows which means that apps may find their way onto displays that are off and you will be looking for them.