How do I disable the screensaver/lock?
Go to System Settings...Brightness and Lock:
The default screensaver idle time is 10 minutes, and the screen is locked once the screensaver activates:
You can adjust the idle time (or disable the screensaver), and also disable the lock:
Simply close Brightness and Lock to apply the new settings.
If you want to wrap your app in a script that takes care of this for you when you launch it (or GUI simply isn't an option), the best command-line solution as of Ubuntu 14.04 is:
To disable the screen blackout:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay <seconds> (0 to disable)
To disable the screen lock:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false
You probably want to add their inverses at the end of the wrapper script to return your system to normal behavior on exit. In such a case, you want to prevent against ungraceful termination (i.e. interrupt, or SIGTERM during system shutdown), so create a function to restore normal behavior and use trap <function> 0 (for bash-type shells) to catch exits and apply the restoration functions.
To disable the automatic screen lock in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome, these are the necessary steps:
- Start the application "Settings"
- Choose "Privacy" under the "Personal" heading
- Choose "Screen Lock"
- Toggle "Automatic Screen Lock" from the default "ON" to "OFF"
To make this answer more useful as a Google search result for common search terms such as "disable lock screen ubuntu" (how I found this page), I've added this answer to extend the context of this page to include the steps to disable the automatic screen lock in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome. System Settings (called simply "Settings" in Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome) are organized slightly differently within Ubuntu 14.10 Gnome than as described by the answer listed above, requiring a different user flow.