Bug 418433

Summary: Widget always claims everything is blocking both sleep and screen locking, which can be inaccurate
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Juan Simón <decedion>
Component: Power and Battery widgetAssignee: Kai Uwe Broulik <kde>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal CC: bugseforuns, jpetso, kde, kdebugs.81do7, mjrixnertx+kde, nate, plasma-bugs-null, robby.engelmann, tneo, trmdi, vikts
Priority: NOR Keywords: usability
Version First Reported In: 5.21.4   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In: 6.6.0
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Juan Simón 2020-03-03 14:33:15 UTC
When Elisa plays music doesn't allow the monitor to be turned off.
Elisa is a music player so I don't understand why it inhibits the energy saving settings I have configured.
I understand that it does not allow the equipment to be suspended or turned off but the monitor being turned off does not prevent the music from continuing to play.

Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.67.0
Qt Version: 5.14.1
Kernel Version: 5.5.7-zen1-1-zen
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 8 × Intel® Core™ i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory: 15,5 GiB
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2020-03-08 02:29:51 UTC
Yeah, it's possible to inhibit system sleep but not display sleep/dimming. Elisa should do that.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2020-11-11 03:08:15 UTC
*** Bug 421522 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Victoria 2021-05-01 08:37:50 UTC
In my opinion at the very least, an audio player should not be inhibiting screen locking.
Comment 4 trmdi 2021-05-01 09:43:14 UTC
> When Elisa plays music doesn't allow the monitor to be turned off.

Hmm... I can't reproduce it. My laptop screen is still turned off while the music is playing, sleep is inhibited.

I am using the latest git version. Am I missing anything here?
Comment 5 Kai Uwe Broulik 2021-05-01 10:11:35 UTC
Are you sure, or did you just read the label in battery monitor? It will always say "screen locking" because it doesn't know what inhibition an app exactly requested.
Comment 6 Patrick Silva 2021-05-01 11:27:58 UTC
I also can't reproduce on neon unstable.
The screen of my laptop is turned off during playback.
Comment 7 Victoria 2021-05-01 12:40:36 UTC
Yes, it was based on the description from the battery monitor applet. Sorry.
Comment 8 Nate Graham 2021-05-01 13:51:46 UTC
Ah, we should make the text show the specific inhibitions rather than a generic message.
Comment 9 Wyatt Childers 2024-07-31 18:20:57 UTC
*** Bug 487118 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Nate Graham 2025-02-26 20:20:43 UTC
*** Bug 500725 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 mjrixnertx+kde 2025-09-17 22:55:29 UTC
*** Bug 509400 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Jakob Petsovits 2026-01-09 17:02:12 UTC
A relevant merge request has been created at https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/merge_requests/598 (and is about to be merged)
Comment 13 Jakob Petsovits 2026-01-09 19:03:50 UTC
Git commit 83f685b79cc31fb5aae03c16285da3f05907a47d by Jakob Petsovits.
Committed on 09/01/2026 at 17:00.
Pushed by jpetso into branch 'master'.

applets/batterymonitor: Redesign inhibition list again

Highlights at a glance:
* Phrasings distinguish between sleep and screen locking
* Remove some labels, so that the user focuses on what matters

Following commit f9c81566, the PowerDevil service provides enough
information to show whether an inhibition is blocking just sleep
or just screen locking, or both.

Introducing this distinction complicated label phrasings though,
so we also had to tweak the UI to remain straightforward enough.

As per Nate's suggested design, the indicator text at the top is
removed for simplicity. The "Manually Block" is once again a toggle,
now at the top of the inhibition section.

We also get rid of the heading "N applications are currently
blocking sleep [and/or screen locking]", which used to appear
when multiple inhibitions were requested.

In order to tell whether sleep and/or screen locking are currently
inhibited, the user therefore has to look at all the remaining
individual list items. However, this is generally acceptable as more
than a small handful of inhibition list items are exceedingly rare.
(An accessible status description continues to summarize the section.)

In return, the section as a whole is tidier, generally with less
text to read, which makes it more likely that the user will actually
try to parse the remaining items.

M  +104  -167  applets/batterymonitor/InhibitionItem.qml
M  +1    -1    applets/batterymonitor/PopupDialog.qml
M  +1    -1    applets/batterymonitor/plugin/inhibitioncontrol.cpp
M  +2    -2    applets/batterymonitor/plugin/inhibitioncontrol.h

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/powerdevil/-/commit/83f685b79cc31fb5aae03c16285da3f05907a47d