The original purpose of screensavers was to save the screen from burn-in due to displaying the same static image for too long and damaging the screen itself. Modern screens do not suffer from this problem and so screen savers are no longer required.

So why do people still use screensavers? Well those who use a screensaver that blanks the screen completely do so to try to reduce power usage. Those who require a password to turn off the screensaver use it to protect their computer if they forget to lock the computer before they leave it temporarily for whatever reason. Others just use it because they think the screensaver displayed looks interesting.

There is another use we can make of screensavers if we set it up so that we can run it instantly when we want to rather than having to wait and that is to be able to quickly hide what we have displayed on the screen if someone comes up to us while we are working on something we don’t want them to see. This tutorial takes you step by step through what you need to do to set this up.

Hiding Your Screen

Tags: hide, screensaver, windows