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https://askubuntu.com/q/1393684
ID:
/2022/02/18/
Created:
February 18, 2022
Edited: February 21, 2022
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January 1, 2025
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A more universal way of locking the screen is using:
loginctl lock-session
Cron doesn’t know the Session ID for loginctl
When you use loginctl lock-session from the command line, your session ID is already known. For example:
$ echo $XDG_SESSION_ID
c2
$ loginctl list-sessions
SESSION UID USER SEAT
c2 1000 rick seat0
1 sessions listed.
The above shows two ways you can get your Session ID from the command line.
This GitHub issue for loginctl explains why the variable XDG_SESSION_ID is unknown to systemd. The same case would apply to cron:
So from cron you could use loginctl lock-session c2 if you knew your session ID would always be c2. An easier way is to use lock-sessions.
I tried this on my system and it works. Try using this on your crontab -e:
*/5 * * * * loginctl lock-sessions
Now, every five minutes your screen will lock.