How to keep the external monitor running even after closing the laptop screen

With the rapid advancement of TV screens lately, we often connect our laptops to these screens to take advantage of the large display size and higher resolution for better visibility, especially when working for long hours, playing games, or working in the design field. Therefore, it’s best to see all the details clearly. When you connect and adjust the external screen as the primary display, you usually disconnect the laptop screen, and as a result, it stops working and becomes useless.

Sometimes you may need to close that screen either to save workspace or because it’s pointless to keep it open without using it. However, when you close the laptop screen, the computer will stop working completely and enter the “Sleep” mode. Therefore, we will explain a great trick in today’s article that allows you to fold and close the laptop screen completely while still operating the computer and using the external screen only.

The trick depends on the power settings of your laptop, as the operating system adjusts some power settings by default, including settings for closing the laptop screen to determine what happens when the screen is closed. By changing these settings, we can allow the computer to continue working even after closing the screen, ensuring that the external screen continues to operate without any impact even after closing the laptop screen.

To do this, you need to access the power settings in the operating system by right-clicking on the battery icon on the taskbar and then clicking on the “Power Options” option or by going to the “Control Panel” and typing “Power Options” in the search bar and then clicking on the same option from the search results.

By accessing the power settings and specifically the sidebar options, click on the “Choose what closing the lid does” option, which allows you to control what happens when you close the laptop screen.

Through the “When I close the lid” option, you can adjust the settings either when the charger is connected to the laptop or when working on battery power only. In both options, you will see that the default setting is “Sleep,” where the computer will be put to sleep mode when the screen is closed, whether connected to the charger or working on battery power.

Therefore, if you are working on the laptop by connecting an external screen for a long period, you can set both options to “Do Nothing” or adjust one of them according to your usage, then click on the “Save Changes” option at the bottom after finishing. This way, closing the laptop screen will not affect the computer’s operation, and the external screen will continue working even after completely closing the laptop screen.