MonitorES Pauses Media, Turns Off Monitor When You Lock Your PC
Windows only: Tiny utility MonitorES pauses your media player, turns off your monitor and sets Google Talk to away whenever you lock your PC.
Using the utility is a no-brainer: just start it up and choose whether to start the screensaver or turn off the monitor when you lock the workstation—the options for pausing media or setting your messenger status are under the Options button. Once it’s running, locking your workstation with the Win+L shortcut key combination will also turn the monitor off at the same time.
MonitorES is free and open source, available for Windows only. If you simply want to shut the monitor off without anything running in the background, I’ve written an article about how to shut off the monitor and alternately lock your PC with a shortcut, or you can use previously mentioned PushMonitOff to turn off the monitor.
MonitorES [Google Code via How-To Geek]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@tarrkid:
That loop where the monitor blinks and wouldn't stop happened to me as well. Didn't know at first what and how it got triggered but I'm pretty sure it was the app.
This is such a neat App, I hope it gets fixed :)
Imtheredude
@tarrkid: I've added it to my to-do list . Thanks for that .
~Umakanthan
ukanth
One thing to be careful of - if your screensaver settings are set to "On resume, password protect", you could be in for a world of hurt.
If I locked my PC, everything was fine, but if I was talking with someone, and the screen saverkicked in on its own, when I returned from screen saver, Windows would lock my PC, and then Monitor ES would run the screen saver. Stuck in an endless loop.
@ukanth, if you can detect for that setting in the Screen Saver properties, that would be great.
tarrkid
@ VerdaJibroni
i've been using foo_lock for years (old version, new version doesn't support multiple users properly).
v 0.4 works perfectly for me in XP.
latest version is here
[kode54.foobar2000.org]
can't find link to old version right now sorry, try that first, maybe submit bug to author if anyone can be bothered please :)
after copying it to your components dir, turn on Pause on Lock in the playback menu, that's it!
Smiff
@DevourerKwi: Don't mind me, I'm an idiot:
SUPPORTED MEDIA PLAYERS
Winamp , AIMP , Windows Media Player
This doesn't seem to work with iTunes (the only thing I can get on my work PC).
@pkoutoul:
I will be adding those support in the upcoming versions.
Thanks,
Umakanthan ( Author of MonitorES )
ukanth
Ahh, if locking your computer causes Live Messenger to be set to Away, I guess I am all set on that front.
Windows Live Messenger is set to "Away" automatically when:
- your screensaver is activated
- you have a full screen video playing
- you lock your computer
It's built in... Why can't google do it?
atomicrabbit
Pandora, foobar and Live Messenger support would make this really awesome for me.
This probably isn't feasible but being able to do this for Pandora would be awesome.
pkoutoul
@njven: Hmm I never actually thought of assigning a key on my G11 to lock the computer instead of using Windows + L.
Can you use one of the G-keys to simulate Windows+L?
@VerdaJibroni: Pretty sure the author is going to be updating with support for more media players, so it'll probably support it at some point in the future.
Seems great, normally I just turn off the speakers (and media continues to play and no one hears it). I have a key designated to locking on my G11.
njven
This would be great for me, if only it supported foobar. Anyone know anything like this that has support for it?
VerdaJibroni
On a similar vein, I use LockTight for the Mac. Its a simple preference pane that allows you to map a keystroke to the screensaver. I mapped my power button my my external keyboard, so now when I get up from my desk in the lab, I just instinctively hit the button, and it starts the screen saver, locks the machine, and its easy as pie.