The other day (could be months, week, days ago) I was running some commands in my laptop and was unable to turn off the screen on demand so I can leave it unattended without burning the pixels of my screen. So this is a quick guide to create a dedicated menu item that instantly powers off the monitor (putting it into standby) while keeping background tasks running.

The Screen Off Command

KDE uses kscreen-doctor to control display power states safely on both Wayland and X11:

kscreen-doctor --dpms off

This command tells the display server to turn off the monitor’s signal without suspending the system, locking the session, or interrupting any running processes.

Create a Custom Application Launcher

1. Open the KDE Menu Editor
2. Create a new item.
3. Set the Name field to something like Turn off screen.
4. Set the Command field to:

   kscreen-doctor --dpms off
   

5. Assign an icon (a monitor/display icon) for quick visual recognition. Merely optional.
6. Save the entry.