Manually turning off iMac G5 Display

Question

Hi,
I've been searching around and haven't been able to find an answer to this.
I have my computer set to turn on the screen saver after 5 minutes of inactivity and turn off the display after 15 minutes of inactivity, and I like it that way. My computer is in my bedroom though, and sometimes I want the display to just shut off when I am going to sleep... but sometimes, I am working on something that takes the computer a while to process, such as exporting a large final cut file, burning a DVD, or leaving an away message enabled on AIM. I don't want to put the entire computer to sleep, because that stopps the process... and I don't want to wait 15 minutes for my display to shut off... and I don't want to change the Energy Saver settings every single time I want the display off!
Is there any way to do this?
Is there a script of somekind that can do this?
I'm familiar with the Apple-Option-Eject command, but that puts the entire computer to sleep, not just the screen.
I've also tried the "Lights Out" app... but that program doesn't do what I want. It's basically a different version of energy saver.
Any suggestions?
Thanks so much.

Answer 1

Open the Script Editor in the /Applications/AppleScript/ folder and paste in the following:
display dialog "What type of sleep do you want?" buttons {"Display", "Full", "Cancel"} default answer "An administrator password is required."
set {the_password, the_button} to {text returned of the result, button returned of the result}
if the_button is "Full" then
do shell script "pmset -a displaysleep 0 sleep 15" password the_password with administrator privileges
end if
if the_button is "Display" then
do shell script "pmset -a displaysleep 1 sleep 0" password the_password with administrator privileges
end if
Changing the power management settings through a method other than the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences requires an administrator password due to the permissions on the files which store them. Save the script as an application and place it in an easily accessible location. More information on the usage of pmset is available here.
(20364)