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Mouse Jiggler makes sure your screen saver doesn't kick in while you watch videos
It used to be that when I watched a movie with VLC, halfway through the movie the screen would suddenly black out. Too late, I would realize that the screensaver kicked in because I hadn't touched the mouse for a while. It was so irritating that I simply disabled my screen saver.
I think VLC specifically addressed this issue, but I'm sure it still happens with other video players. Mouse Jiggler is a tiny, handy utility whose sole purpose in life is to jiggle the mouse cursor for you, so that the screensaver doesn't kick in.
It has a neat feature called "Zen jiggle" (I love the name) which jiggles the mouse "invisibily" – meaning, your computer thinks the mouse is moving, while the cursor doesn't actually move anywhere.
The GUI is sparse, and I like that. Just two check boxes. You can't even minimize it or hide it, and I think that's great: this way you can't forget it on, and then wonder why your mouse is randomly jiggling while you're working. Very nice!
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsRichardAug 9th 2010 10:29AM
Can someone please tell me how to do this with VLC? My Samsung Netbook keeps dimming the screen after a couple of minutes and I'm unable to find any option in the Windows Control Panel or VLC to prevent this from happening.
I'll happily use Mouse Jiggler, if all else fails.
JonnyAug 9th 2010 11:28AM
wow...i totally could have used this....12 years ago!
MuzikgodAug 9th 2010 12:22PM
anyone else get an error message trying to enable it? Using windows 7 64 pro.
JasonAug 9th 2010 3:49PM
That's funny, I wrote an AutoHotKey script a while back that does pretty much the exact same thing!
DavidAug 9th 2010 9:28PM
You know what would be more handy? An app that detects when you launch WMP (or any other app you specify), and temporarily disables the screen saver/monitor timeout while it's running, returning to the previous settings once none of the specified apps is running any longer. And I'd be willing to bet that this program (or perhaps an AutoIt script) exists somewhere already.
DrakkenfyreAug 9th 2010 10:59PM
I don't have this problem by simply moving the mouse every once in awhile.
I don't see, even if the screen kicked off, the second or two you would miss would be worth installing an app, especially if you just rewind that bit.
RichardAug 11th 2010 4:26AM
Try sitting back on a train, watching a movie and remembering to jig the mouse every couple of minutes to prevent the backlight turning off.
It's great that you are capable of doing this without much thought but, for the rest of us, it tends to spoil the experience.