Find out what is keeping your Windows PC awake, or your screen on.
Your PC is meant to go to sleep after a while, and the screen to turn off, but it doesn't. WhyNotSleeping tells you why: a power plan set to "Never", an app playing audio, a driver holding the system awake, or a device (a mouse, a joystick, a remote) sending input that Windows counts as you being there.
Grab WhyNotSleeping.exe from the latest release and double-click it. There's nothing to install or unpack, and you don't need .NET.
- It asks for administrator rights (the UAC prompt). Only an administrator can see which apps and drivers are keeping Windows awake. If you say no, it still runs and shows your power settings, the screen state and your input devices.
- Windows may say the publisher is unknown because the executable is not code signed. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
- It follows your Windows light/dark setting.
- Closing the window doesn't stop it: it keeps watching from the notification area (the tray). Click its icon to bring the window back, right-click it and choose Exit to quit. Turn screen off (in the window and the tray menu) turns the screen off now, and the away group's devices with it so their noise can't wake it. Tick Start with Windows to have it start there each time you sign in, without the administrator prompt (it's a scheduled task named WhyNotSleeping).
WhyNotSleepingCli.exe is the same monitor in a console window, for anyone who'd rather have that (see Console version).
Two verdicts at the top, Sleep and Screen, each saying in plain words whether something is blocking it and what. Below them:
- Your power plan: when the PC sleeps and the screen turns off ("Never" is the most common culprit), whether you're plugged in, how long you've been idle, and whether the screen is actually on, off or dimmed.
- Keeping it awake: the apps, services and drivers asking Windows to stay awake (audio streams, video playback, downloads, Windows Update...) and how long each has been holding on. Right-click an app to ignore its requests or open its folder.
- Input devices: every mouse, keyboard, game controller, touchpad, touch screen, pen, media-key remote and power button that sent input, by name (e.g. "Razer Basilisk V3"), which ones actually reset the idle timer, and what each one is sending ("key Num Enter", "mouse moved", "vendor channel 2 jittering between 33856 and 33879"). Click a controller to watch its axes and buttons live. Jittery controls and software-injected input (remote desktop, mouse jigglers) are flagged.
- Event log: requests appearing and disappearing, power changes, the screen turning off and on (and how late that was compared to the timeout), input after a quiet spell, and gaps where the PC was actually asleep. Filter by event type or search for a device or app. Export filtered log applies those filters to the full saved history, including overnight events that have scrolled out of the window. It's also saved to
%LOCALAPPDATA%\WhyNotSleeping\whynotsleeping.log, so you can leave it running overnight and check in the morning what woke the screen at 3am. - When I'm away: the away group, controllers to turn off by themselves while you're away (see below).
- Ignored apps: apps whose requests Windows has been told to disregard, with a button to stop ignoring them.
Light mode
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| Sleep after: Never | Click Power & sleep settings and pick a time under Screen, sleep & hibernate timeouts. |
| Screen off after: Never | Same place, the screen timeout. |
| An app is Keeping the screen on | Usually a video player or a browser tab playing video. Close or pause it. |
| An app is Keeping the PC awake | Often audio (a muted or forgotten stream, a voice chat app). Close it, or right-click it and choose Ignore this app if you never want it to keep the PC awake. |
| A driver says An audio stream is currently in use | Something is playing sound, even silence. Find the app playing audio and close it. |
| A controller, joystick or HOTAS is resetting the idle timer | See below. |
Some controllers reset Windows' idle timer every time they send a report, and a controller with a noisy sensor sends reports all the time, even when nobody touches it. To find out which part is doing it, open Input devices, click the controller and leave it alone for a minute. The list below shows every axis and button live. Whatever you move or press lights up, and a control that changes on its own is marked in red: jittering when it wanders over a sliver of its range, or changing nonstop when it keeps moving for a whole minute while the keyboard and mouse sit idle.
That screenshot is a real Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog that nobody was touching. Its X and Y axes don't move, but it also reports two vendor channels, a raw copy of the stick's position that games don't read, and those wander by a few counts thousands of times a minute. That alone reset the idle timer over 1,300 times a minute.
- A jittering axis (X, Y, throttle, slider...): recalibrate it, or add a small deadzone in the vendor's software (VKB DevCfg, VPC Configurator, Thrustmaster TARGET, Logitech G HUB...).
- A jittering vendor channel: no game setting, deadzone or calibration reaches it. Turn the device off when you're not using it: right-click it in Input devices and choose Turn off this device (it stays off, even after a restart, until you right-click it and choose Turn back on). Or unplug it; a USB hub with power switches makes that easy.
If Windows refuses to turn a device off because a program has it open, WhyNotSleeping names that program. It is often Steam (Steam Input keeps every controller open): exit Steam, turn the device off, then start Steam again.
- Keyboard or mouse modes: many HOTAS and button boxes also show up as a keyboard or mouse, or their software (TARGET, Joystick Gremlin, Steam Input) turns axes and buttons into key presses. Look in Input devices for a keyboard or mouse with your stick's name: the What it's sending column says which key or movement it is.
The verdict cards name the device and the control, so you can check a fix worked.
Turning a stick off by hand every evening gets old. Put it in the away group instead: right-click it in Input devices and choose Add to the away group. Then, once nobody has used the keyboard or mouse for 10 minutes (you choose how long, in the When I'm away tab) and all the stick sends is noise, WhyNotSleeping turns it off and, as you choose:
- lets Windows turn the screen off and sleep on its usual schedule, now that nothing resets the idle timer,
- turns the screen off right away (the default), or
- puts the PC to sleep right away.
It comes back on as soon as you move the mouse, press a key, use a controller or unlock the PC. Pressing buttons or really moving the sticks of any controller counts as someone being there, so nothing is turned off under someone flying with the HOTAS alone or playing with a gamepad; noise from vendor channels, a tiny jitter, or an axis that spikes and snaps straight back doesn't count. (A controller whose axis keeps swinging widely on its own looks like someone using it, and keeps the group on: the When I'm away tab names it. Recalibrate it, or turn it off when you're not using it.) By default it also waits while a full-screen game, video or presentation is running. The event log says when it turned the devices off and back on.
The away group turns devices off only until they're turned back on or Windows restarts, so nothing can stay off for good: if WhyNotSleeping is stopped while they're off, it turns them back on the next time it starts. It needs administrator rights, and Steam can stop it like it stops Turn off this device (see above); it then says so in a notification and in the event log.
Right-click the tray icon to Pause the away group for 30 minutes, one hour, or until WhyNotSleeping restarts. Pausing turns its devices back on and cancels any pending screen-off or sleep action. When the pause ends, or you pick Resume the away group, it waits its full time again before acting. If a device can't be turned back on, it retries when you next use the keyboard, mouse or a controller, at most every 30 seconds, or straight away from Turn the away group back on. Pauses are temporary and don't change the saved settings. If a device still resets the idle timer while the group is paused, or Windows refuses to turn it off, the verdicts show it as an unresolved problem and explain why.
WhyNotSleepingCli [options]
-i, --interval <sec> Refresh interval (default 5)
--once Print a single snapshot and exit
--log <file> Event log file (default .\whynotsleeping.log)
--no-log Don't write an event log
--no-elevate Don't relaunch as administrator (power requests won't be visible)
Keys: [q]/[Esc] quit, [r] refresh now.
Useful command-line equivalents of the fixes above (run as administrator):
powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 30 # sleep after 30 minutes on AC
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 10 # screen off after 10 minutes on AC
powercfg /requestsoverride PROCESS app.exe SYSTEM DISPLAY # ignore an app's requests
powercfg /requestsoverride PROCESS app.exe # stop ignoring itNeeds the .NET 10 SDK on Windows.
dotnet run --project src/WhyNotSleeping.Gui # the window
dotnet run --project src/WhyNotSleeping.Cli # the console monitor
dotnet test # the tests
./build.ps1 # both single-file executables into dist\
./scan.ps1 # scan dist\ with Microsoft Defender, as CI doesThe solution has three projects. WhyNotSleeping.Core holds the monitoring: power settings, powercfg requests and overrides, display-state notifications, raw input, the verdicts and the away group. WhyNotSleeping.Gui (WinForms) and WhyNotSleeping.Cli are two front ends over it.
tests/WhyNotSleeping.Tests (xunit) checks what decides things, without the machine it usually reads: parsing powercfg output, the two verdicts, what counts as noise from a controller and what as someone using it, when the away group acts and every reason it waits, and what is written to disk (the settings file and the startup task).
CI builds with warnings as errors, runs the tests, publishes both executables exactly as a release does, smoke-tests the console tool, and scans the executables with Microsoft Defender. The release workflow runs the tests and the same scan again before it publishes anything. Dependabot keeps the Actions and the test packages current, monthly.
- Bump
<Version>inDirectory.Build.propsand add a### <version>section under Release notes. CI fails a pull request that changessrc/without both, unless a commit says why it doesn't need to with aNo-version-bump: <reason>trailer. - Open a pull request. The
mainbranch ruleset (.github/rulesets/main.json) requires both CI checks to pass before it merges, and blocks force-pushes and deletion; repository admins can bypass it. - Merge, then tag the merge commit:
git tag -a v1.0.1 -m "..." && git push origin v1.0.1.
The release workflow refuses a tag that disagrees with Directory.Build.props. It builds both executables, smoke-tests the console tool, scans the files with Microsoft Defender, and publishes them with that version's notes.
- Turn screen off, in the window and the tray menu, turns the screen off a second later. The away group's devices are turned off with it, so a noisy controller can't wake the screen straight back up; the mouse, a key or a controller brings everything back, as after any away.
- The away group's put the PC to sleep action turns on the shutdown privilege Windows needs for it, and says why if Windows refuses.
- A worn axis that spikes and snaps back no longer counts as someone using the controller. A Warthog throttle's slider flicking between 6 and 62 dozens of times a second, nobody touching it, kept the away group waiting forever, so the screen never turned off. A move now counts once the axis stays there for a quarter of a second.
- Pause the away group from the tray for 30 minutes, one hour, or until the app restarts; resume it whenever you like. Pausing turns devices back on, including during a disable operation. When a pause ends, the group waits its full time again instead of acting at once.
- A device that can't be turned back on (Steam holding it, say) is retried on your next input at most every 30 seconds, instead of every second with a log line each time.
- Failed away actions stay red in the verdicts and name the device and Windows' reason, such as Steam keeping it open. Paused groups no longer read as taking care of noisy devices.
- Filter and search the event log, then export the matching events from the full saved history. Manual device actions are logged too.
- Power and startup commands have a real 10-second timeout, with their output read concurrently. If
powercfgfails or times out, the verdicts say so for that refresh and the rest of the report (power plan, input devices) still shows; the console version no longer stops. Ignoring or unignoring an app runs in the background so the window stays responsive. - New events are added to the event log list without rebuilding it, and the search waits until you stop typing.
- Settings and the list of devices the away group turned off are written to a temporary file and replaced only after the complete contents are flushed to disk, preserving the previous file if writing fails.
- Exiting or unlocking while the away group is turning devices off now waits for the operation and turns them back on. Input, a newly opened full-screen app, or changes to the group during that operation cancel the screen-off or sleep action.
- Devices that could not be turned back on are retried when you next use the keyboard, mouse or a controller. Disabling the away group or removing a device also restores devices it turned off.
- Devices turned off by the current run are restored even if their reminder could not be saved to disk.
- Signing out or shutting down while the away group is turning devices off waits for that, then turns them back on before Windows ends the app.
- Invalid saved away settings no longer crash the window or let the away timer use a delay outside the displayed 1–240 minute range.
- Runs in the notification area: closing the window keeps it watching. Click the icon to open it, right-click it to exit.
- Start with Windows, in the tray, without the administrator prompt at each sign-in.
- The away group: controllers that are turned off by themselves after a while with nobody at the keyboard, mouse or a controller, if all they send is noise, then the screen turned off or the PC put to sleep if you like. Playing with any controller keeps them on; they come back on with the mouse, a key, a controller or unlocking the PC.
- A noisy controller in the away group shows in the verdicts as a warning that says it is taken care of, not as a red problem.
- Starting it a second time brings the running window forward.
- A device turned off and on again, or replugged, is listed once, keeping its history.
- Works on Windows in other languages: whether it runs as administrator is checked directly, instead of by looking for
powercfg's English refusal. On Windows in another language the refusal is translated, and could have been taken for "nothing is keeping it awake". - A control that keeps changing for a whole minute while the keyboard and mouse sit idle is flagged as changing on its own, even when it swings over a wide range. Before, only small jitter was caught. The verdicts name that control first.
- The ignored apps list no longer asks for administrator rights; Windows shows it to anyone.
- Turning a device off and back on is now tested on real hardware (a Thrustmaster rudder, once Steam had let go of it).
- Turn an input device off and back on from Input devices (right-click), like Disable in Device Manager: for a controller whose noisy sensor keeps the screen on, without unplugging it. It stays off until you turn it back on, and the app lists it as turned off even after a restart. Mice and keyboards can't be turned off this way, so you can't lock yourself out.
- When a program has the device open and Windows won't turn it off, the message names the program (often Steam).
- First release: a window (
WhyNotSleeping.exe) and a console monitor (WhyNotSleepingCli.exe), both single self-contained executables. - Verdicts for sleep and the screen: power plan timeouts, power requests, display state, and input devices that reset the idle timer.
- Says what each input device is sending, and shows a controller's axes and buttons live, so a jittering axis or channel can be pinned down to the exact control.
- Ignore an app's power requests from the window, and stop ignoring it again.
- Follows the Windows light/dark setting.