https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=494316
Bug ID: 494316
Summary: feature: turn off screen on 0% brightness
Classification: Plasma
Product: Powerdevil
Version: 6.1.5
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: general
Assignee: plasma-b...@kde.org
Reporter: demur...@demurgos.net
CC: natalie_clar...@yahoo.de
Target Milestone: ---
SUMMARY
Please add an option so trying to lower the brightness to zero (or one step
below zero) turns off the screen. This would be akin to muting audio when
setting the volume to the minimum.
The use case is to keep the laptop active while it does some long running job
(so no sleep) while avoiding it from emitting light which may be annoying, and
allow to control this using the builtin function keys of the laptop. Using the
function keys has the best discoverability in my opinion compared to some
custom shortcut (I'm not even sure if there's such a shortcut).
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Reduce screen brightness to minimum
2. Reduce screen brightness further
OBSERVED RESULT
Screen still emits light.
EXPECTED RESULT
Screen goes black.
SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.1.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.6.0
Qt Version: 6.7.3
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
I have a laptop with an internal screen. On Plasma 5.27, I could use the
brightness slider or function keys to turn off the backlight entirely when the
brightness was set to the minimum (0). When checking the value from
`/sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness`, it went from 0 to 1500. 0
corresponded to a black screen.
Since Plasma 6, the brightness controls (either the graphical slider or
function keys) restricts the range set to the hardware between 1 and 1500. It
means that it is no longer possible to turn off the screen just by lowering the
brightness. There were a few issues and discussions to restore support for
truly setting the value to zero (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=483490,
https://old.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1dqj2ny/how_to_set_brightness_to_zero_which_completely/).
It was implemented for external displays but internal displays are still
restricted to 1 as the minimum in
https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/commit/6ca6308ccd2f3266f20f84af6658fa97547e12ee
The reason to limit setting the internal value to zero is that it actually does
not turn off the display but disables the backlight. I was not aware of the
difference and assumed that Plasma 5 turned off turned off my screen. In fact,
it was just disabling the backlight so the screen was black but there was still
some power consumption for the LCD. Given that it's easy to confuse "screen
off" and "backlight off" I understand why the change was done in Plasma 6 to
restrict the value zero; but in the meantime it means that the feature was lost
to quickly get the screen to black.
Discussions indicated that this previous behavior (from Plasma 5) was
unintended and that restoring this behavior would actually be a new feature. It
also mentioned that the proper way for this would be turn off the screen
(instead of just disabling the backlight). Therefore I'm opening this issue to
request the return of turning the laptop screen black using the function keys.
Alternatively, I would appreciate if I could set the internal brightness to
zero even on internal screens. When I run long jobs on my laptop I'm usually
plugged in (so less concerned about the battery).
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