[Feature Request] - Add support for "Screen OFF on leave" feature aka "Screen Lock On Leave"

[nitin_exclusively (Nitin Joshi)]

Few ThinkPad products support features related to “Human Presence Detection”.

This feature is “Screen OFF on Leave” aka Screen “Lock on leave” .
Earlier this feature was called as “Lock on Leave” but in future, this feature will be changed to “Screen OFF” only on Leave for user convenience. This will be same as Windows also.

Microsoft Reference Links:

• Lock on leave - Windows | Microsoft Learn
• Presence sensing | Microsoft Learn
  
  

We did some current prototype outside GNOME like below:

There are 2 sysfs for HPD detection used for this feature-

• /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/in_proximity0_raw - For HPD detected /undetected
• /sys/bus/iio/devices/iio:device0/in_proximity1_raw - For HPD Proximity i.e distance

Current Issue:

Screen blank without fade animation or lock screen

Is there any way to perform “Screen blank” only with the following in mind without fade animation without locking the screen Currently , I am using gnome details of the following API gnome-settings-daemon for controlling the screen blank using “idle-delay” gnome-desktop-screensaver for controlling the lock using “lock-enabled” When setting “idle-delay”. as I understand, it utilizes screenshield, which inherently has fading as a mechanism when turning the screen to blank. To enable the l…

Screen blank has fading animation during idle which we want to remove .

It will be helpful , if there is any comment and we can add this feature in GNOME settings .

Thank you !

[Josef-Ouano]

Hello all.
This is in support to @nitin_exclusively’s request.
Basically, the proposal is as below:

• Add Screen-Off-On-Leave key in gsettings-desktop-schema org.gnome.desktop.screensaver
  JOSEF OUANO / gsettings-desktop-schemas · GitLab

• Modify Screenshield in gnome-shell to accept Screen-Off-On-Leave Logic
  For now this modification will be in the form of a gnome-shell-extension
  Josef-Ouano/ScreenBlankNoFade at WIthGsetting_ScreenOffOnleave_Implementation

• Add Screen-Off-On-Leave Feature to gnome-control-center
  I cannot provide the source code for this for now, but basically the feature is the prototype as shown above in Nitin’s Post.

Above modifications were made on gnome-46 and Ubuntu 24.04 as of now, but will eventually update to latest versions.
However, could not fully test gsettings-desktop-schema ScreenOffOnLeave modification because of issues during install. So during testing, I am currently testing on a branch without screen-off-on-leave implementation for both the gnome-shell extension and GUI app.

How this works:

1. Set Screen-Off-On-Leave setting → True when Screen-Off-On-Leave Feature is enabled
2. (Extension is enabled) Screen-Off-On-Leave Feature will utilize HPD Proximity and Distance values for determining if Screen Blank should be triggered. Screen-Blank Sequence is triggered (by setting idle-delay to 1 sec) when person is not detected after set amount of time and distance.
3. Disable-lock-screen is set to True
4. Screen-Off-On-Leave setting is checked if it is True in the extension. If True, disable-lock-screen setting is checked. If True, then during screen blank, fade animation is disabled.
5. The normal idle-delay value is restored after this sequence.

The proposal might be rough around the edges, but I am very much open to any suggestions on how best to implement this feature.

I had made a post about disabling fade and lock screen in an earlier post
Screen blank without fade animation or lock screen - Desktop - GNOME Discourse
But I did find a way, using gnome-shell-extension as of now.

[felipeborges]

This looks very interesting.

Have you considered doing this through/with? https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/hadess/iio-sensor-proxy

[nitin_exclusively (Nitin Joshi)]

@felipeborges Thanks for your comment ! No , we have not considered it as we can use sysfs directly . Also , since the functionality is GUI based and we can use it directly in GNOME . Is it recommended to check it ?
I have tried checking it today but it seems can’t see hpd sensor information … may need some support for iio_proxy_sensor maintainer, if we need to use it ,

Btw , as @Josef-Ouano has mentioned, do you have any comment regarding Screenshied and gsettings-desktop schema changes ?

Thank you !