Windows Sleep is a handy tool. Think you won’t be accessing your PC for a while? Just put it to Sleep, and you can get busy with your work without concerns about power loss or needless heating. Move your mouse or hit Enter from your keyboard, and you will be back in no time.
But did you know you can limit the devices that allow you to wake up your PC? Pretty cool, right? So let’s look at how you can do that right away.
How to manage which devices can wake up your Windows from Sleep
Although your keyboard or mouse can wake up your Windows from sleep by default, you can tweak things to limit or increase the devices that can wake up your PC from Sleep. Let’s learn how.
Check which devices can wake up your PC from Sleep
Before we get the managing part, it’s important to get clear on which devices can wake up your PC from sleep in the first place. You can do that with the Command prompt. Here’s how to open the Command prompt and check the devices:
- Head to the Start menu search bar, type in ‘cmd,’ and select the best match.
- Now, type in the following command and hit Enter:
powercfg -devicequery wake_armed
You will instantly get a list of devices allowing you to wake up your PC from sleep. Now, let’s look at how you can manage which devices have permission to wake your computer.
Manage devices that can or cannot wake up your Windows PC from Sleep
One of the easiest ways to manage your devices is through the Device Manager. So if you’re looking to allow or block a specific device from waking your PC from Sleep, follow the steps below:
- Press the Win + X shortcut to open the Power User menu.
- Select the Device Manager from the list.
- Now, pick one device such as mouse, right-click on it, and click on Properties.
- From the Properties windows, click on Power Management.
- Select the Allow this device to wake the computer checkbox to permit waking up your PC. Alternatively, uncheck the same checkbox to limit the device’s working.
- Click on OK to save the changes.
You can repeat the above steps other devices like your keyboard, etc., and you can manage which devices can or cannot wake your PC from the Sleep mode.
Allow or disable devices to wake your Windows from Sleep
Limiting which devices can wake your Windows computer can sometimes be a good idea. For example, you don’t want your PC to wake up by an accidental touch to the mouse from your kids or pets at home, right? So follow the above steps, and you, too, can limit which devices do what. Alternatively, depending on your situation, you can in fact choose Hibernation (as Hibernation differs from Sleep in some ways).
