How can I make my screen blank by a shortcut?
You can just make a shortcut to the blank screensaver and then set a keyboard shortcut via the properties window for the shortcut.
The screensaver is called scrnsave.scr
, located in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32
.
You can easily do this with NirCmd, these four options will give you a black screen each (with side effect):
Turn off the monitor.
nircmd.exe monitor off
Start the default screen saver (set it to a blank one, so you can make the screen blank).
nircmd.exe screensaver
Put your computer in 'standby' mode.
nircmd.exe standby
Turn off your computer.
nircmd.exe exitwin poweroff
Make sure that you have nircmd.exe
in C:\Windows\System32
if you want to call it from anywhere.
As Dennis Williamson pointed out in his comment, you can create a hotkey like this:
nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "C:\Windows\Temp" "MO" "Ctrl+Shift+M" monitor off
Or a shortcut on your desktop which you can click like this:
nircmd.exe cmdshortcut "~$folder.desktop$" "Turn Monitor off" monitor off
With AutoHotkey, you can bind any of the above commands to a hotkey:
#s::Run nircmd.exe monitor off
The above hotkey WIN+S would for example turn the monitor off.
An alternative program, if you dislike scripting, could be PhaseExpress.
Set your screensaver to the one called "blank". Press Win-L.
Here are some examples of using AutoHotkey to turn off the monitor or start the screen saver without needing NirCmd.