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I am running SMPlayer 0.8.0 (mplayer frontend) on Linux Mint 14 64bit, when I play a movie and stop using the peripherals the screensaver kicks in after a while.
I have checked the "Disable screensaver" option in the preferences, but it does not do that. Neither does running mplayer from the terminal. How do I fix this?

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  • I'm currently trying out a different solution and keeping gnome-screensaver: open smplayer, menu options > preferences > advanced (left menu) and select "Options for SMPlayer". There try adding this: -heartbeat-cmd "gnome-screensaver-command -d" -- then restart the smplayer. Not sure if it works, that's why this is a comment for now :)
    – Savvas Radevic
    Feb 22, 2013 at 12:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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This is a known problem having to do with the way that gnome3 controls the screensaver. Haven't looked into it for a while now but I used to have the same thing with vlc. According to the Arch wiki, you have two options. You can either disable it for mplayer (which should also work for smplayer) specifically, or you could use another program disable it for various programs.

The mplayer way

First, replace gnome-screensaver with xscreensaver:

sudo apt-get purge gnome-screensaver 
sudo apt-get install xscreensaver

Then, add the following to ~/.mplayer/config:

heartbeat-cmd="xscreensaver-command -deactivate >&- 2>&- &"

lightsOn

LighstOn is a simple BASH script that will inhibit the screensaver when it detects any of a list of user defined programs (mplayer, and therefore smplayer, are on the list by default) running in full screen mode.

Replace gnome-screensaver with xscreensaver: as described above. Then, download lightsOn from here. I just tried it and it works perfectly. You might want to make it start automatically by adding it to Cinnamon's start up application list.

caffeine

Caffeine is a system tray applet for Gnome3 (it may or may not work in Cinnamon, I have not tried it). According to this site, you can give it a list of programs and it will inhibit the screensaver if they are running (full screen or not). According to the same site, it can work with both xscreensaver and gnome-screensaver so you may want to check it out. 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine python-glade2
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  • I will try that, but I have to add that VLC does not have this issue. PS. Is cinnamon DE based on gnome3?
    – b-vigilanT
    Feb 2, 2013 at 20:30
  • @b-vigilanT VLC does not have it? Hmm, OK cause I just tested it on vlc and it worked :). Not surprising if the problem was not there. I will check smplayer next. Yes, cinnamon is a fork of GNOME3.
    – terdon
    Feb 2, 2013 at 20:37
  • @b-vigilanT I found a better solution, see my updated answer.
    – terdon
    Feb 2, 2013 at 21:10
  • Actually, your first solution worked out fine. I watched whole of Harry Potter three, lying in my bed and subsequently falling asleep in it. :) But it's nice to know about those programs. :)
    – b-vigilanT
    Feb 3, 2013 at 19:52
  • 14.04 ubuntu, smplayer: lightsOn.sh did work! but caffeine did not..
    – Aquarius Power
    May 30, 2014 at 6:06

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