Server Version#: 1.16.0.1226-7eb2c8f6f
Player Version#: I don’t know where to find this
The screen going blank while listening to music is very annoying. Screensaver on the Fire Stick is set to “Never. I see no screensaver setting in either the app (i.e. while listening/viewing on the TV via the Fire Stick) or the server (on my computer).
Help, please, how get Plex to just continue to show the music that’s playing?
The Plex app doesn’t have a setting. It follows whatever the device does. Is it the Firestick or your TV? Maybe your TV is only checking for a video signal to stay awake.
I’m pretty sure this is a FireOS thing. When I use the web browser to play videos on a website, the app automatically exits back to the home screen after about 20 minutes if there is no cursor usage, but when you watch YouTube (which actually loads in a web browser), this does not happen and long videos can be played without interruption.
Feels like a screen-saver/auto-sleep function. But the control is not user-accessible.
Not now it doesn’t. You are correct… but wait…
This goes all the way back to ‘Crappy Nappy®’ Days. Remember those days? Well, you don’t have to 'cause they’re right here:
(search ‘Crappy Nappy’ - you’ll find all you need to know)
The FTV app used to time out and go to sleep while playing music. Users were not happy. It took a few months and a few updates (updates kept breaking what was fixed), but finally a ‘work-around’ was found and that was to run the FireTV screen saver at 5 minutes. The time limit was reached, the screen went black, but the music kept playing - all this to hold off the Fire Screensaver that would halt the app… and, of course, the music (at exactly 20 minutes).
Subsequent updates kept Crappy Nappy® at bay, but the app screen saver had no more user control. Fortunately (unfortunately for our OP) the work around behavior is now forced on the user. The Plex screen saver still kicks in, but now there is no user control for it (typical).
For my part, I’m happy Crappy Nappy® isn’t back. The OP wants a way to turn off the screen saver in the Plex App, but in order to do that you’ll have to code some user controls back into the app, but please… no Crappy Nappy®.
Note:
If you don’t have history with Crappy Nappy® you won’t know what had to be done (endured) to get it fixed. It required a ‘work-around’ for the user and some behind the scenes fixing at Plex HQ and apparently there were ‘work-arounds’ employed there as well.
If you don’t have a FireTV or Fire Stick you’ll never know what’s happening, or what happened. You just had to be there…
Thanks for the replies. This occurs with two Fire Sticks on two different TVs. The Fire Stick screensavers are set to Never, the TVs for 2 hours with the same image on the screen. Obviously since the Plex image changes with each song, that’s not the issue. We have Fios which has music channels, the Fios shuts off after several hours of nothing being done with the Fios; like Plex, the screen changes for each song (actually, it changes several times for each song; but it’s random selections of their music, not ours). We watch plenty of things through the Fire Stick (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu), none blanks the screen after 20 minutes except Plex.
Yep, the Plex Screensaver is kicking in. It has to or Crappy Nappy® ensues. To get what you want would mean, I fear, the return of Crappy Nappy® and nobody wants that.
I feel your pain - when I have to open a Plexweb or wake up the app to see what that guy’s name is playing that song I didn’t know I had on shuffle.
It’s one or the other and personally I prefer the ‘one’ in favor of ‘the other’.
Thanks again.
Well, I expect Plex could just FIX IT, but if we’ve given up on that…
We, as users, have no idea what’s going on or what’s going to happen, but if you’d been around during the infamous Crappy Nappy® difficulties - you may vote for leaving well enough alone.
How bizarre that their response to this is silence, apparently agreeing that if they tried to fix it they’d just frak it up worse…
Any hope the “new user interface standard – code-named UNO” will fix this?
You can disable sleep mode and screensaver mode using shell commands via ADB, this works for the 4k Firestick and should work for the previous model although I would suggest googling first as what I’m about to provide you with is how I did it on mine and family members 4k firesticks.
Anyway you need to get an app called ADBLink, it’s available on linux, mac OS and windows, best thing about this app, is that as long as you’re connected to the same network, be it wifi or ethernet, you can still use this 
In your firestick you want to enable ADB debugging, by gonig to Settings > My Fire TV > Developer Options, once enabled you want to go to about > network to get your ip address.
Now on your chosen OS install and run ADBLink.
Once open, Click New this may take a moment to load.
A window will appear
Enter a description, i called mines FTV 4K, but name it whatever you want.
In the address box, enter your ip address.
Click Save
Under select device, you should see your device already selected.
Click Connect
First time you do this it will probably fail to connect, but if you look at your firestick it is asking for permission, give it permission and then click connect again.
In “Connection Status” it should now say IP connection with the device description on the left hand side.
Next click on ADB Shell
If you enter the follow line of commands, it will tell you what value is currently set to
settings get system screen_off_timeout
Default screensaver value is usually 300000, about 5 minutes.
settings get secure sleep_timeout
For sleep mode, the default value is usually 1200000 which is about 20 minutes.
The max value you can use for your screensaver is 2147460000, you’d think 0 = off but apparently it doesn’t, to change the value you’d enter the following.
settings put system screen_off_timeout 2147460000
Now for sleep mode, just change the value to 0 to turn it off.
settings put secure sleep_timeout 0
if you want, you can use the settings get commands I provided to check the values were entered, now you can just close and disconnect ADBlink and ofcourse disable debugging.
Hope this helps.
This WORKS, thank you so much!
Glad I could help
I was able to do something similar by using adb from my old Ubuntu 14.04 desktop. Thanks to Skullzy for pointing the way using ADBlink. Unfortunately, the glibc version on 14.04 is outdated and incompatible with ADBlink. I also had some problems with ADBlink on my iMAC.
Turn on ADB debugging on the firestick as described in the post by Skullzy and get your IP address for the firestick.
In your firestick you want to enable ADB debugging, by gonig to Settings > My Fire TV > Developer Options , once enabled you want to go to about > network to get your ip address.
Download and save the zip file for ADB,
https://dl.google.com/android/repository/platform-tools-latest-linux.zip
Unzip the file.
unzip platform-tools_r29.0.4-linux.zip
cd platform-tools
adb connect xxx.xxx.x.x:5555 Using the IP address of the firestick
You will need to go to your TV and and allow permissions via the dialog.
Check for a connection,
adb devices
This should show your attached device.
Now use the adb shell to change the settings.
adb shell settings put system screen_off_timeout 2147460000
adb shell settings put secure sleep_timeout 0
Check with.
adb shell settings get system screen_off_timeout
2147460000
adb shell settings get secure sleep_timeout
0
Now your music should play without timeouts.
As I noted, this worked for both of our Fire sticks, but after a few months one of them reverted (screen blanking after playing for a while) – did the above process and while “screen_off_timeout” was still 2147460000, “secure sleep_timeout” had reverted to 1200000 – reset it to 0 again, will see if it lasts.
Thanks again for this!
Thanks Skullzy, brilliantly simplified walkthrough for a process I’d been putting off due to thinking it would be harder than it was. Cheers!
If anyone reading this is apprehensive about trying Skullzy’s solution, don’t be - it took me five mins to fix an issue that’s been bugging me for weeks.
Now all that remains is to track down the #***## at Amazon who thought it would be a good idea to prevent customers from accessing these settings…
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