Use another lockscreen with XScreensaver? Is it possible?

Support
1

Hi

I use i3wm, with betterlockscreen to lock the screen. I want to use XScreensaver to launch a Screensaver when I lock the screen manually and then return to the locked betterlockscreen after I move the mouse or press a key.

Is it possible to do this?

2

find the location in the i3.conf where the screensaver is called

bind them with & on the same line

example

 screensaverA & screensaverB &
3

I used

betterlockscreen -l & xscreensaver-command --activate &

but the screensaver gets activated after I unlock the screen.

4

It was just a thought - it seems logical that only one lock screen can be active at any given time.

After all it locks all user input/activity - it don’t think what you want is doable.

5

I understand.

Is it possible to improve the design of xscreensaver’s lock screen. Or an alternate to xscreensaver that can use the gluqlo screensaver?

6

I don’t know - what does an internet search tell you?

1 Like
7

XScreensaver has the screensaver I want but not a good lock screen. I tried gnome-screensaver (which shows a blank screen, and I found no way to configure it). Light Locker and Slim are good replacements for the lockscreen part of XScreensaver, but don’t support screensavers.

I can start the screensaver by executing it from /usr/lib/xscreensaver but that is of no use without XScreensaver.

Basically, I am stuck

8

I have configured i3lock and script which blurs the screen - hit Ctrl-Alt-Del - then L - nothing fancy - and something I rarely use - but I reckon the it is necessary for many users.

The different screen savers you can choose - is those separate binaries/scripts - I mean - they cannot all be a part of the bin - but must be implemented as libraries or something - if I look at xsreensaver - there is a lot of backends and frontends and choices - just check with AUR

9

Following script should do what you want. It’s watching the status of the xscreensaver until it is UNBLANK.

#!/bin/bash

xscreensaver-command -activate &
xscreensaver-command -watch | while read -r line
do
    if [[ ${line::1} == U ]]
    then
        killall xscreensaver-command
        betterlockscreen -l
    fi
done
1 Like
10

Thanks. This is working nicely.

11

This topic was automatically closed 15 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.