You can disable the screensaver by running xset s off.
Enable it again by writing xset s 5, where 5 is the number of seconds it takes your screensaver to come back on.
If you want to write a script, you could attempt to do something like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Wrapper around the main body to facilitate being run
# from a startup file like .xinitrc, ~/.config/autostart, ...
while :; do
if pgrep xscreensaver >/dev/null; then
METHOD="xscreensaver"
pkill xscreensaver
else
METHOD="xset"
xset s off
fi
# If you want to be really fancy:
## notify-send "Screensaver Disabled" $"The Flash plugin is running"
while ps ax | grep libflashplayer.so >/dev/null; do
sleep 1 # Sleep while waiting for Flash to exit
done
if [ "$METHOD" = "xscreensaver" ]; then
xscreensaver &
else
xset s 30
fi
# If you want to be really fancy:
## notify-send "Screensaver Enabled" $"The Flash plugin has exited"
sleep 30
done
At @snapfractalpop's request, a short use guide:
Put this somewhere in your home directory - it doesn't matter. You probably want to make a ~/bin directory if you don't have anywhere for personal scripts already. For the purpose of this explanation, I'll assume you put it in ~/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh.
chmod +x ~/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh or make it executable some other way.
Assuming your DE is one of the common ones (XFCE, GNOME, and KDE can load scripts this way), create a file called ~/.config/autostart/flash-screensaver.desktop and add the following to it.
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Flash Screensaver Disabler
Exec=/home/WHATEVER_YOUR_USERNAME_IS/bin/youtube-scrn-svr.sh
Terminal=false
Categories=Network;
StartupNotify=false
Try logging out and watching a suitably long video, and see if the screensaver is enabled.
1
if [ "$(pgrep xscreensaver)" ];→if pgrep xscreensaver;. Just sayin'. – user1686 – 2011-10-23T20:21:01.590@grawity Thanks for the tip - I'm more used to Tcl and C, so the extra syntax feels a little more natural. – new123456 – 2011-10-23T21:05:00.837
Can you elaborate on this a little? Where does this script go? Does one have to manually run it every time they view a youtube video that is longer than 5 mins? Why isn't this working out of the box? – snapfractalpop – 2013-01-11T22:45:46.580
1@snapfractalpop Try it now. There's an added section at the bottom explaining how best to use it. – new123456 – 2013-01-18T20:10:19.740
This has to be the most stereotypically over-engineered response to a "how to" question about Linux ever. Where do I vote this into the hall of fame? – Mark E. Haase – 2013-10-08T04:41:55.977