This works!

Key Commands

1. List Connected Displays To see all connected outputs and their status:

kscreen-doctor -o

Example output:

Output: 1 eDP-1
        enabled
        connected
        Modes: 1:2560x1600@60.00*!

This helps identify your display names (e.g., eDP-1 or HDMI-A-1).

2. Turn Off All Displays (DPMS) To put all displays into low-power mode:

kscreen-doctor --dpms off

Uses DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) to turn off displays safely.

3. Turn On All Displays To wake all displays:

kscreen-doctor --dpms on

4. Disable/Enable a Specific Output To control a specific display (e.g., HDMI-A-1):

kscreen-doctor output.HDMI-A-1.disable
kscreen-doctor output.HDMI-A-1.enable

Note: Avoid disabling your primary/laptop panel (e.g., eDP-1) unless you have another display connected.

5. Bonus: Adjust Brightness or Scale

kscreen-doctor output.eDP-1.brightness.50  # 0-100
kscreen-doctor output.eDP-1.scale.1.5     # Scale factor

Thank you for sharing your setup. Your solution using wlr-randr in a cron job is indeed useful for wlroots-based compositors (such as Sway, Hyprland, or labwc), where the wlr-output-management protocol is supported.

For those (like me) encountering the error ‘compositor doesn’t support wlr-output-management-unstable-v1’, this indicates that the compositor in use (e.g., KDE/KWin, GNOME/Mutter, or other non-wlroots compositors) does not support wlr-randr. In such cases, alternatives should be considered.

I will be post my findings, I can’t believe I’m the only or just one of the few looking to archive this in a laptop…