How to Configure Your Windows 10 Laptop to Run with Its Lid Closed

Digital Literacy For Dummies

When you plan to keep your laptop in one spot and you’ve attached an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor, you can get away with closing the laptop’s lid and using only the full-size desktop computer

To ensure that the laptop doesn’t sleep or hibernate when you close the lid, you configure the system so that the laptop does nothing when the lid is closed. Follow these steps:

Open the Control Panel.

Press Win+X to summon the supersecret shortcut menu. Choose Control Panel.
Click the Hardware and Sound category.
Click the link labeled Change What the Power Buttons Do.

The link is located beneath the Power Options heading.
In the Power Options System Settings window, locate the When I Close the Lid row and click the button in the Plugged In column.

It’s the lower right button in the set of six buttons.
Choose Do Nothing.

This action directs the laptop to do nothing when the power is on, the laptop is plugged in, and you close the lid.

You shouldn’t choose this same option from the On Battery column. Ensure that the laptop either hibernates, sleeps, or shuts down when you close the lid on battery power.
Click the Save Changes button.
Close the System Settings window.

Of course, you may have to open the laptop to turn it on, but after it’s on, you can close the lid and use the keyboard, monitor, and mouse just like you do on a desktop computer.

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.