Windows 10 and Windows 11 wake-up timers: what they are, how to view and disable them

Wake timers allow your computer or laptop to "wake up" from sleep or hibernation to do something, typically maintenance and upgrades. Sometimes this can be useful, in some cases, such as a laptop with rapid battery drain, not so much.

This tutorial details how to view activated wake timers in Windows 11 and Windows 10 and, if necessary, turn them off. Please note: Power-on timers are not the only possible cause of spontaneous startup, other possibilities are described in the article: What to do if your computer or laptop turns on or wakes up by itself.

View wake timers in PowerShell and on the command line

To see a list of active wake timers, you can use Windows PowerShell or command-line commands. For the PowerShell option, the following steps can be used:

1. Run Windows PowerShell or Windows Terminal, this can be done by right clicking the Start button and selecting the appropriate menu item. No need to run as administrator.
2. Enter the command

   Get-ScheduledTask | ? {$_.Settings.WakeToRun} | Out-GridView

3. This will open a window with a list of wake-up timers and their status – On or Off. Note that the window may open 'behind' the active PowerShell window and you may not notice it if the terminal is full screen.

One way to view wake-up timers on the command line:

1. Run command line as administrator (this is required for this method). You can do this by typing “Command Prompt” in taskbar search and selecting “Run as administrator”.
2. Enter the command

   powercfg -waketimers

3. This will bring up a list of wake-up timers, but in this case only the ones that are on.

How to disable wake-up timers

If you want to disable the activation timers, there are several ways to do it. The first is by using the power settings in Control Panel:

1. Press the keys Win + R on the keyboard, enter powercfg.cpl and press Enter.
2. Click “Power Scheme Settings” in the active power scheme and in the next window click “Change advanced power settings”.
3. Expand the "Sleep" section. There you will find the item “Allow wake-up timers” with the option to enable, disable or leave enabled only important wake-up timers on battery and mains.

You can do the same with commands on the command line, running as administrator.

Disable wake-up timers (first command is on battery power, second on mains power):

powercfg /SETDCVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20 bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d 0
powercfg /SETACVALUEINDEX SCHEME_CURRENT 238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20 bd3b718a-0680-4d9d-8ab2-e1d2b4ac806d 0

If you change the 0 at the end of the command to 1, this will enable the wake-up timers, the value 2 means only important timers will be enabled.

Another option is to individually disable the corresponding jobs. When viewing wake timers using the first method, the TaskPath column indicates the path of the task in the job scheduler. Just run it (Win + R - taksmgmr.msc) and find the corresponding task.

By clicking with the right mouse button on the task it can be deactivated. And if you open the properties of the task (just double click on it), you can uncheck the box “Wake up the computer to run the task” in the “Conditions” tab.