Add an activity timeout setting when plugged in

[Pat McGowan]

When running in windowed mode with a mouse/keyboard the tablet or phone becomes the PC. For this use case it would be useful to have a separate setting to control inactivity timeout when plugged in.

See also bug 1580479.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Pat, this setting would be fairly simple to design, but I don’t understand the use case. Can you elaborate on why windowed vs. staged would make any difference to how soon people want the display to go to sleep? (For example, which one do you think people would usually set to longer?)

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

A user made this request and reading it now I misstated it somewhat.

The desktop has separate settings for on AC and on battery, and in windowed mode we are acting as a desktop so it makes sense to be consistent. But this should likely be dependent on whether it is plugged in or not. Would plugged in and in windowed mode make sense? The use case is the tablet acting as my desktop, plugged in on my desk in windowed mode with a mouse and keyboard.

I personally make the inactivity timer quite long when plugged in as there is no battery concern.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Notebooks have different sleep settings for AC vs. battery because (a) it’s common to spend substantial time using one with each power source, and (b) when using battery you might reasonably sacrifice convenience for more battery time.

Phone OSes do not have different sleep settings for AC vs. battery because (a) it isn’t common to spend substantial time using one with each power source. You can use a phone while it’s charging, but most people don’t spend much time doing that.

We should introduce that setting for people who often use an Ubuntu device while it’s connected to power, whether it be a PC or a tablet. So I guess you were suggesting “in windowed mode with a mouse and keyboard” as a proxy for “is likely to be used for substantial time while connected to power”? That’s plausible, but the connection would be frustratingly non-obvious for people in the gap — an architect who uses their tablet at their desk with a stylus rather than a keyboard+mouse, for example.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

Actually, I think there's no reason not to allow different behaviour based on power (and possibly other factors) when in staged mode...

For example, if my phone/tablet is in a dock on my desk, I may want to leave the screen on to keep an eye on email or telegram while I'm working on something else etc...