How to Turn Off a Monitor using a Desktop Shortcut on Windows

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By default, windows does not provide any option to turn off your computer’s monitor from the desktop. Well of course its a easy task to turn off any monitor, but what about those who have a multi monitor setup?

Although turning off multi monitors isn’t a time consuming task, but who doesn’t want to perform simple tasks quickly and the easy way? For those who want to turn off their monitors within a single click of their mouse, read on to find out how you can turn off your computer’s monitor or monitors using a desktop shortcut on windows.
First of all, you will need to a tiny and multi-purpose utility called as Nircmd. While this tiny utility may be around 100kb in size, but you will be surprised by the things that it can do. For a complete list of what this tiny little utility is capable of, take a look at its download page at nirsoft.
Next you will need to extract the contents of the downloaded file and save it in a folder, most preferably somewhere in the C drive. Once you’ve done that, simply follow the instructions below.

How to Turn Off a Monitor using a Desktop Shortcut on Windows

  • Step 1: Right click anywhere on the desktop and select New > Shortcut.

create-shortcut

  • Step 2: Now click on browse and navigate to the location where you had saved the nircmd.exe file and select it.

create-a-shortcut-to-turn-off-monitor

  • Step 3: Add quotes to the beginning and the end of the path and then add the following argument :

cmdwait 1000 monitor off

Here’s how the final argument should look.

“C:\path-to\nircmd.exe” cmdwait 1000 monitor off

add-argument-to-path

  • Step 4: Click on next and enter a name for the shortcut. Finally click on finish to create the shortcut.

add-name-for-shotcut
That’s it and now you can double click on the shortcut created to quickly switch off your computer’s monitor.
turn-off-monitor

Changing the icon of a Shortcut

Additionally you can even change the shortcut’s icon and give it a new look. To do that you can right click on the shortcut and select properties.
change-icon-on-windows
Next click on icons and select from any of the icons available on windows. Alternatively you can even download icons from the internet and use them.
select-icon
 
Finally click on OK to save the changes.
create-desktop-shortcut-to-turn-off-monitor-on-windows

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