How to Extend the Windows 10 Lock Screen Timeout

Windows 8 brought us the lock screen, which serves as a bridge between waking your PC from sleep and typing your password. This lives on in an enhanced form in Windows 10.

Some see the lock screen as redundant, but it does have uses, including providing you with information from your apps and allowing you to use Cortana in the Anniversary Update.

By default, the lock screen will remain active for one minute after the computer is powered on or after pressing the Windows key + L to lock the system. After one minute, the screen will gradually disappear, and all displays will go to sleep.

Contrasted to the behavior in Windows 7, which kept the lock screen up for as long as your power settings dictated, this is a pain.

If you have customized your lock screen and want it to remain displayed for more than 60 seconds after locking your computer, the following registry editing method can achieve this.

1. Type regedit into the Start Menu.

2. Find Registry Editor from the search list, and click Open.

3. Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\7516b95f-f776-4464-8c53-06167f40cc99\8ec4b3a5-6868-48c2-be75-4f3044be88a7

4. Right-click on the Attributes key and choose Modify.

5. Changing the value from 1 to 2.

6. Type Power plan in the Start menu, and click Edit power plan.

7. Click Change advanced power settings.

8. Under the Display section, you’ll find a new setting titled Console lock display off timeout.

This is the number of minutes that pass before your lock screen fades out; setting it to 0 means it will never time out.

Now you can enjoy your lock screen as long as you like!