Prevent Changing The Screen Saver Timeout Period

Everyone personalizes their computer to a certain degree, and although screen savers were a requirement for old CRT monitors to prevent blurring of Images and text, they're not needed nowadays for LCD monitors and the like. Nonetheless, for one reason or another, users still tend to apply It, hence In this tutorial, I will show you how to securely prevent the screen saver timeout period from being changed.


Before I make a start, here's what I'm referring to. When you access the Screen Saver Settings on your computer, you have the option to apply the amount of time (In minutes) before the screen saver kicks In due to Inactivity. You can either enter a value, or apply It via the arrows as shown below.

If you have multiple users sharing your PC, they can also do the same and mess up your original settings. Moreover, If you've set a screen saver password to enable after ex-amount of Idle time, you'd certainly want It to remain as Is.

As such, I will demonstrate how to prevent changes to the screen saver timeout period, by using the good old Group Policy Editor. Do note that the GPE Is only available In Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise and Education editions. If you're running either of these, then this tutorial Is for you. So without further ado, let's get this started.

Step One:

The first thing you need to do, Is access the Group Policy Editor. Open the Run menu, enter gpedit.msc and hit OK as shown below.

Step Two:

The Group Policy Editor will now launch, so navigate to the following directory.

User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Control Panel > Personalization

Make sure the Personalization folder Is selected, and on the right pane, double-click Screen saver timeout.

Step Three:

To the left of the window, select the Enabled radio button. Now you need to enter the number of seconds until the screen saver kicks In. For the purpose of this tutorial, I've entered a value of 800 which Is around 13 minutes. When you've applied yours, hit OK to finalize the process.

Step Four:

From this point forward, the screen saver timeout period cannot be changed. Let's check It out, by entering screen saver In the Windows 10 Search box and clicking Change screen saver.

Last Step:

The Screen Saver Settings has executed, and as you can see, the Wait time In minutes Is grayed out, hence the timeout period cannot be changed. Perfect!

Final Thoughts:

It really doesn't get much easier than this, does It? The entire process from the point of launching the Group Policy Editor to applying the changes, only takes a minute or two to complete. If you want to reverse the change and have the screen saver functioning as per Its original state, simply refer to Step Three above, and select the Not Configured radio button. Don't forget to hit OK on exit.