mjhjmtu

I know mplayer has some heartbeat setting but I don't recall what it is, could anyone tell me?

another one of those annoying things that used to just work and somewhere along the line stopped being default

mplayer has the switch -heartbeat-cmd to run a command every 30 seconds, but as the man page says:

This can be "misused" to disable screensavers that do not support the proper X API

The actual switch meant to disable screensavers is -stop-xscreensaver; you should probably try that first

For me it's --stop-screensaver

When using --stop-xscreensaver the mplayer warns me: option --stop-xscreensaver was replaced with --stop-screensaver and might be removed in the future.

Debian & mpv 0.23.0 (C) 2000-2016 mpv/MPlayer/mplayer2 projects

mplayer -stop-xscreensaver does not work for me (Debian wheezy; xscreensaver=5.15-3, xfce4=4.8.0.3, mplayer=2:1.0~rc4.dfsg1+svn34540-1+b2) - the screensaver still comes on during the movie. I wrote a screensaver inhibition tool xscreensaver-inhibit, and an mplayer wrapper play. xscreensaver-inhibit is useful for other things like youtube so I put a shortcut on my panel for it.

$HOME/bin/xscreensaver-inhibit is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
usage () 
 echo "usage: $0 [on

if [ -n "$1" ] ; then
 [ "$1" = "on" -o "$1" = "off" ] || usage
fi

inhibit () 
 while [ -f "$lock" ] ; do
 # echo "$lock exists"
# UPDATE Dec 2018 this command seems to have stopped working after upgrading to Debian Stretch.
 # DISPLAY=:0 xdg-screensaver reset
# Replaced with this command which is working for me,
# though if you do not use xscreensaver you might need something else.
 DISPLAY=:0 xscreensaver-command -deactivate
 sleep 50
 done
 # echo "$lock is gone"


lock="/tmp/xsi.lock"

if [ -e "$lock" ] ; then
 echo 'Screensaver currently inhibited.'
 on='on'
else 
 echo 'Screensaver operating normally.'
 on=''
fi

if [ "$1" = "on" ] ; then
 if [ -n "$on" ] ; then
 echo 'Starting screensaver inhibitor anyway.'
 else 
 echo 'Screensaver inhibitor started.'
 fi
 touch "$lock" && inhibit &
fi

if [ "$1" = "off" ] ; then
 if [ -n "$on" ] ; then
 echo 'Screensaver inhibitor(s) stopped.'
 else 
 echo 'Perhaps the screensaver daemon is not running or another program is inhibiting it.'
 fi
 rm -f "$lock"
fi

if [ ! -n "$1" ] ; then
 if [ -n "$on" ] ; then
 echo 'Screensaver inhibitor(s) stopped.'
 rm -f "$lock"
 else 
 echo 'Screensaver inhibitor started.'
 touch "$lock" && inhibit &
 fi
fi

$HOME/bin/play is as follows:

#!/bin/sh

xscreensaver-inhibit on

DISPLAY=:0 mplayer -fs "$@"

xscreensaver-inhibit off

I included DISPLAY=:0 so the movie will play on the local active display even when I am logged in over SSH. play is also the default handler for all movie files in my file manager.

Note that sox provides /usr/bin/play so if you have sox installed, you might want to call play something else.

You can write similar wrappers for your other fullscreen apps that you don't want the screensaver interrupting.

xscreensaver-inhibit works on all DEs, Linuxes, and screensavers on which I have tried it. In case you get xdg-screensaver: command not found, run apt-get install xdg-utils.

UPDATE Dec 2018 changed main command in xscreensaver-inhibit from xdg-screensaver to xscreensaver-command - NOT tested on all DEs, Linuxes, screensavers. YMMV