Any ideas on how a person might add a countdown timer, to warn that the screensaver is about to turn on? I've got to re-login whenever it does, and sometimes I'm just sitting here, thinking. I wouldn't want something like Mouse Jiggler -- I do want the screensaver to turn on, on schedule, unless manually interrupted. Thinking of maybe some text at the center of the screen: "Screensaver commencing in 10 ... 9 ... 8 ..."
Hi, presume you have the checkbox ticked to require logon.
I would guess you'd be looking for a 3rd party program that executes the countdown for you, displaying a counter. There are some that will display a counter and take action, but you're looking for one that warns shortly beforehand. Search and you might find- I did find someone asking a similar question on a site requiring membership.
An old Experts Exchange thread gave me the idea for a search leading to a workaround (and also, incidentally, to a patent filing for a related solution). The workaround is to modify the registry to allow more than the default five-second grace period, between the time when the screensaver starts and the time when the screen is locked. For that, the registry addition I used is this:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]
"ScreenSaverGracePeriod"=dword:00000015
This workaround doesn't display a counter, but it does effectively alert the user that the grace period has begun. Note a hotfix for a reported issue affecting grace periods longer than 60 seconds on some versions before Windows 10.
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