Screen blanker without locking screen?

[chuser]

I have recently fallen into the habit of falling asleep while listening to podcasts on Youtube. Even though I turn my laptop's screen to the dimmest, it still shines brightly in the dark bedroom. If I lock the screen, it will eventually go dark, but then the screen is locked. Sometimes in the playlist, a loud podcast will come on and I'll have to adjust the volume, and I'm too sleepy and bleary-eyed to enter my password correctly, find the volume control at the bottom, and adjust.

Is there a simple program that will just blank the screen without locking it? I don't want to disable the lock function as I use it in the daytime. I just want to move the mouse to get the screen on again so I can use the mouse wheel to adjust the volume.

 

[TechnoMage]

A little history..... The screen blanker/saver was originally created to prevent the problem of the old CRT's burning in with whatever image was left on the screen for a long period of time.
It became unneeded with the new LED or LCD screens.
If you just go into screen Personalization (Right click your mouse on the desktop) and open 'Screen Saver', you can select "Blank" as your choice of Screen Saver. Then pressing a keyboard key or working the mouse will cause it to go back to normal screen.
I've not had a CRT in years, so neither have I used a screen saver in years.
Good Luck!
TM
PS: I just tried "Blank" on my own Windows 8 PC, and it worked like it always has. One mouse movement restored the original screen.

 

[Lifewalker]

I use NirSoft's NirCmd to do the same thing. This command line app is a swiss army knife.
You can make a 1 click shortcut (pin to taskbar) to instantly blank the screen.
Shake/Click your mouse or hit any key and the screen wakes up.
Hope this helps!

Get the portable nircmd.exe
Scroll to the bottom of page and pick your version x86 or x64
(I see you have a 64 bit machine)
Unzip it to it's own folder and put it anywhere
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

My example in a committed portable folder:
C:\Portable\SYSTEM\NirInternals\NirSoft\x64\nircmd.exe
or anywhere:
C:\nircmd-x64\nircmd.exe

Then make a shortcut
Right click the desktop or anywhere and go to > New > Shortcut
Paste your path with a space after .exe like:
C:\nircmd-x64\nircmd.exe monitor off

Name it maybe: Monitor Off
And pick an icon by right clicking the shortcut:
go to Properties > Change Icon > then search for almost any .dll or .exe
I like one that looks like a fading moon from C:\Windows\System32\powercpl.dll