# How do I darken my monitor while playing music? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2007, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338 "2007-07-11T07:17:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/1 "2007-07-11T07:17:04Z")
I love the feature that Divx has that darkens all of the screen except the window you’re watching a movie in, but I doubt there are similar programs. What I really want to do is just make my screen black (or at least mostly so) while playing songs in Windows Media Player. There _has_ to be some way to do this. Either I’m not familiar enough with the settings, or I need a patch or something. Searches of reputable sites like CNet yielded nothing. Any ideas? ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/2 "2007-07-11T07:32:27Z")
[QUOTE=dnooman] I love the feature that Divx has that darkens all of the screen except the window you’re watching a movie in, but I doubt there are similar programs. What I really want to do is just make my screen black (or at least mostly so) while playing songs in Windows Media Player. There _has_ to be some way to do this. Either I’m not familiar enough with the settings, or I need a patch or something. Searches of reputable sites like CNet yielded nothing. Any ideas? [/QUOTE] Shut off the monitor? ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/3 "2007-07-11T08:07:24Z")
[QUOTE=drachillix] Shut off the monitor? [/QUOTE] I neglected to mention that it’s a laptop, not sure if that’s an option. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/4 "2007-07-11T08:21:57Z")
There is a setting that darkens my monitor after a certain time of inactivity by the keyboard & mouse. Normally, I have that set at a few minutes. Could you possibly have a batch file that would set this way down, to darken the monitor after say, 10 seconds? (And probably another one to re-set it after you stop playing music.) ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/5 "2007-07-11T08:31:06Z")
Just lower the brightness on your monitor to as low as possible, set your screensaver to blank, and set the time for the screensaver to 1 minute. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/6 "2007-07-11T08:33:29Z")
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net] There is a setting that darkens my monitor after a certain time of inactivity by the keyboard & mouse. Normally, I have that set at a few minutes. Could you possibly have a batch file that would set this way down, to darken the monitor after say, 10 seconds? (And probably another one to re-set it after you stop playing music.) [/QUOTE] If that file only worked while WMP was running it would be great. An ideal program would either do as you said, in WMP only, or have a command like ctrl+b to darken, and any input to revert states. Maybe it would have to be a shift+ or alt+ , but you get the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Lars\_Aruns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@Lars\_Aruns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lars_Aruns)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/7 "2007-07-11T09:27:05Z")
[QUOTE=dnooman] I neglected to mention that it’s a laptop, not sure if that’s an option. [/QUOTE] Laptops often have key combinations to redirect the video output from the LCD to the VGA socket, sometimes in combination, sometimes, like in mine, exclusively. You could try and see if there’s any function like that, so that when you want to switch off the screen you’d just redirect the video signal away from it. ---
**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2007, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-darken-my-monitor-while-playing-music/411338/8 "2007-07-11T12:55:09Z")
Try [this](http://www.zerge.com/antispye/).