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PSA: GOG Galaxy app is currently preventing Windows PCs from turning off displays and/or sleeping

Polyh3dron

Polyh3dron

Prophet of Regret
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,860
If you're a Windows PC gaming person like myself, who leaves their PC on and has its display(s) go to sleep after a certain period of inactivity, you may have noticed over the last few days that said displays are not turning off anymore. After a few days of this, I figured out how to investigate this, and found the culprit: GOG Galaxy. Apparently their winter sale banner animation is triggering a "Video Wake Lock" in the system, which prevents Windows from turning off displays, even when the app is running in the background with no window being displayed. If you run this app like I do, go to the command prompt as an administrator (cmd.exe) and type in "powercfg -requests" (no quotes). You'll get a response with something a bit like this:

CIikpls.png


If you go into GOG Galaxy and close the banner (the X at its top-right) and run the same command again, it goes away.

Thanks for shortening the life of my displays, CDPR!
 
chrominance

chrominance

Sky Van Gogh
Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,641
TIL about `powercfg -requests`.

Weirdly, I do have GOG Galaxy running and the command doesn't show it asking for video wake lock. Might be because I haven't opened the actual GOG window since I turned on the computer and it's just running in the background minimized to the system tray.
 
OP
OP
Polyh3dron

Polyh3dron

Prophet of Regret
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,860
chrominance said:
TIL about `powercfg -requests`.

Weirdly, I do have GOG Galaxy running and the command doesn't show it asking for video wake lock. Might be because I haven't opened the actual GOG window since I turned on the computer and it's just running in the background minimized to the system tray.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Mine was also in the background and hadn't been opened.
 
Hero Prinny

Hero Prinny

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
3,192
Gog galaxy gives me all kind of issues. A common one is when its running in the background itll randomly force minimize whatever i have in full screen (like games) and make itself the main app as if i just opened it up. I just leave it closed entirely now unless im going to play a game off of it cause all the issues I've been having with it are beyond annoying
 
Shadow

Shadow

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,126
Sooo many things in windows messes up sleep, it's pretty annoying. They really should have a way to ignore sleep requests. Like just an option in the task manager showing which apps are keeping the PC awake and a way to disable that sleep request. I've used that powercfg -requests probably over 100 times at this point.

I've had things from my PS4 controller plugged in, to Windows update not letting it sleep until I updated and restarted.
 
rainz

rainz

Member
Nov 1, 2017
396
Mine didn't go away when i clicked the x (which just minimizes the client to the tray) and ran the cmd again. Was still showing the wake lock until i exited gog galaxy from the small icon. Cheers for the heads up though I was wondering what my PC was doing just yesterday, good to know!
 
TaySan

TaySan

SayTan
Member
Dec 10, 2018
31,465
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Might just uninstall Galaxy anyways. The app constantly desyncs my accounts and half the time I find myself just using the platforms separately without even thinking about it. Like it takes the same amount of clicks to open up Steam and the game I want to play.
 
Fularu

Fularu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,609
I have galaxy open at all times and never had the issue you're describing

As usual it's good info but will wildly depend on everyone's setup
 
spineduke

spineduke

Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
8,754
Mukrab said:
What makes it better?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Does everything GOG does and more. Its also faster and lighter on the system. No more dealing with disconnecting integrations or whatever they' cooked up with GOG.

You also get a ton of extensions available to you, made by the community, akin to the way you get chrome or firefox extensions. Themes, fullscreen modes, the list goes on.
 
Sabretooth

Sabretooth

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,067
India
It's amusing to me that this is preventing Windows from turning off displays, but meanwhile I downloaded Halo Wars 2 and Halo Infinite from Game Pass - two Microsoft games on a Microsoft service for a Microsoft OS - that would turn off display if a cutscene went on for too long without my touching the keyboard/mouse.
 
Transistor

Transistor

Hollowly Brittle
Administrator
Oct 25, 2017
37,169
Washington, D.C.
I stopped using GOG Galaxy because they never fixed the fact that the app would just crash and refuse to work if you launched it over RDP.
 
RankFTW

RankFTW

Member
Oct 28, 2017
718
Scotland
OMG thank you. I have had this issue for months but just turned my monitors off at night.

EDIT: It worked.

EDIT 2: I was so used to my monitors staying on and now this feels weird haha.
 
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