Linux – Prevent screensaver when flash is running in linux

flashgnomelinuxscreensavervideo

I imagine that my problem is not unique to my circumstances, and I have been having it for some time.

I am running Arch Linux, and quite frequently watch videos, particularly flash, in fullscreen. However, eventually, the screensaver appears, and starts dimming the screen. I have the screensaver set to run whenever the computer is 'idle'. Does anyone know a way to either

  • Stop the screensaver from appearing when in a flash video or watching other video?
  • Stop the screensaver from appearing when a flash video or normal video is full-screened? Heck, even…
  • Let the screensaver know that my machine is not idle when watching flash.

Best Answer

You can disable the screensaver by running xset s off.

Enable it again by writing xset s 5, where 5 is the number of seconds it takes your screensaver to come back on.

If you want to write a script, you could attempt to do something like this:

#!/bin/bash
# Wrapper around the main body to facilitate being run
# from a startup file like .xinitrc, ~/.config/autostart, ...

while :; do
    if pgrep xscreensaver >/dev/null; then
        METHOD="xscreensaver"
        pkill xscreensaver
    else
        METHOD="xset"
        xset s off
    fi

    # If you want to be really fancy:
    ## notify-send "Screensaver Disabled" $"The Flash plugin is running"

    while ps ax | grep libflashplayer.so >/dev/null; do
          sleep 1 # Sleep while waiting for Flash to exit
    done

    if [ "$METHOD" = "xscreensaver" ]; then
        xscreensaver &
    else
        xset s 30
    fi

    # If you want to be really fancy:
    ## notify-send "Screensaver Enabled" $"The Flash plugin has exited"

    sleep 30
done

At @snapfractalpop's request, a short use guide:

  1. Put this somewhere in your home directory - it doesn't matter. You probably want to make a ~/bin directory if you don't have anywhere for personal scripts already. For the purpose of this explanation, I'll assume you put it in ~/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh.

  2. chmod +x ~/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh or make it executable some other way.

  3. Assuming your DE is one of the common ones (XFCE, GNOME, and KDE can load scripts this way), create a file called ~/.config/autostart/flash-screensaver.desktop and add the following to it.

    [Desktop Entry]
Name=Flash Screensaver Disabler
Exec=/home/WHATEVER_YOUR_USERNAME_IS/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh
Terminal=false
Categories=Network;
StartupNotify=false

  4. Try logging out and watching a suitably long video, and see if the screensaver is enabled.

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