PowerToys’ New Toy – Awake

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The toys are slowly piling up in PowerToy’s collection. The new member in town, called Awake, is a utility tool that keeps a computer awake on-demand without having to manage its power settings. It can be helpful when running long time-consuming tasks while ensuring that your PC doesn’t not go to sleep or turn off its screens.

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If you haven’t, let’s update the PowerToy to the latest release, at least v0.41.3 from its Download and Release page first.

Then, open the PowerToy settings to start Awake by using the Enable Awake toggle.

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Once enabled, it runs quietly in the system tray to manage the awakeness state of your computer.

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There are 3 modes available through Awake utility with a behavior option that keeps your screen on or not. By default, it’s in Off (Passive) mode, which basically does nothing.

You can also choose to “Keep awake indefinitely” or “Keep awake temporarily” with a pre-defined limited time.

You can switch the mode simply through the icon in the system tray as well.

Interestingly, Awake can be executed (PowerToys.Awake.exe) as a standalone application directly from the PowerToys folder, with a number of command line’s arguments.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks again Kent.

    I hadn’t looked at the new PowerToys even though you have covered it in the past. One thing I noticed is that it includes keyboard remapping, which reminded me of your previous article “How To Assign Media Key Buttons on Windows 10”.

    Looking at the details for PowerToys remapping, it also includes some special media key targets like “Play/Pause media” and volume controls. So it may be an another option to get those media keys back.

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