How to permanently disable sleep/suspend?

According to the Debian Wiki, you can also disable it via systemd like so:

sudo systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

While I have done this on my machine, I can't attest to its effectiveness. Not brave enough to try it out intentionally.


On Ubuntu 16.* try this.

Go to:

  • System Settings

Click on:

  • Brightness & Lock

  • Turn screen off when inactive

  • Set it to 'Never'

Hope it helps :)


Run the following command to open the file to edit:

sudo -H gedit /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/10-vendor.d/com.ubuntu.desktop.pkla

Scroll to the bottom. Check to see if the following information exists, and if not add them:

[Disable suspend]
Identity=unix-user:*
Action=org.freedesktop.upower.suspend
ResultActive=no

Doing this makes suspend do nothing when you click it; it will disappear from the menu after you restart your computer.

You can run this command also to prevent computer from sleeping:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0