## Summary

Omarchy 4.0 blanks the displays ~5s after every lock, and there is **no way to opt out** — no `shell.json` setting, no plugin override, and the pre-4.0 escape hatch (`OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY`) is now dead code.

Pre-4.0, the shipped `hypridle.conf` deliberately locked *without* powering displays off, and said so in its own comments. That behavior is no longer reachable.

## What changed

The `hypridle.conf` that Omarchy shipped (still on disk at `~/.config/hypr/hypridle.conf` after the 4.0 upgrade, now orphaned since `hypridle` was removed):

```
general {
    lock_cmd = OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY=true omarchy-system-lock  # lock without powering off the displays.
    before_sleep_cmd = OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY=true omarchy-system-lock
}

# Show the black lock screen after 30 minutes while leaving display power on.
listener {
    timeout = 1800
    on-timeout = pidof hyprlock || OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY=true omarchy-system-lock
}
```

In 4.0, `OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY` is read by nothing. `grep -rn OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY /usr/share/omarchy/` returns zero hits; the only matches on my system are my own leftover config files.

Blanking moved into the shell's lock plugin and became unconditional — `shell/plugins/lock/Service.qml`:

```qml
:136   lockRequested = true
       armBlankTimer()                     // unconditional, on every lock

:172   function runBlank() {               // no config gate
         if (!blankProcess.running) blankProcess.running = true
       }

:410   Process { id: blankProcess
         command: ["bash","-c","omarchy-brightness-keyboard off; omarchy-brightness-display off"] }

:415   Timer { id: idleBlankTimer; interval: 5000
         onTriggered: if (root.lockRequested && !root.authenticatingPassword) root.runBlank() }
```

## Why there's no workaround

- **No config knob.** `runBlank()` has no gate; nothing in `shell.json` reaches it.
- **No plugin override.** `shell/services/PluginRegistry.qml:599` — *"Third-party plugins never shadow first-party ids"* — and the check at :603 rejects the entire `omarchy.*` namespace.
- **No PATH shim.** `/usr/share/omarchy/bin` sits ahead of both `~/.local/bin` and `~/.local/share/omarchy/bin` in the session PATH, so a wrapper around `omarchy-brightness-display` never gets resolved.

That leaves patching `/usr/share/omarchy/shell/plugins/lock/Service.qml`, which every `omarchy` package upgrade reverts.

## Why it matters beyond preference

Leaving panels lit on a black lock screen is a reasonable configuration, not a quirk:

- On mini-LED / OLED panels a black lock screen already drops backlight zones to near-zero, so forced DPMS-off buys little power.
- DPMS-off drops the DP link. On monitors with slow re-sync that costs several seconds of black on every wake, and it puts the GPU through a full link re-train.
- That last part is not always benign. On this machine (dual DP monitors on a discrete RX 9070, nothing on the iGPU), waking from a long idle lock produced a **hard lockup requiring a power cycle** — the card dropped off the PCIe bus:

```
Aug 19 09:55:15 kernel/shell: idle-monitor: active          <- wake
Aug 19 09:55:15 omarchy-shell: There are no outputs - creating placeholder screen
Aug 19 09:55:17 omarchy-shell: WARN: The Wayland connection experienced a fatal error: Invalid argument
Aug 19 09:55:20 kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: Fence fallback timer expired on ring sdma1
Aug 19 09:55:21 kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: device lost from bus!
Aug 19 09:55:21 kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: SMU: bus error for message: EnableSmuFeaturesLow(8) response:0xFFFFFFFF
Aug 19 09:55:23 kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: Dumping IP State
Aug 19 09:55:28 kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: MES(1) failed to respond to msg=MISC (WAIT_REG_MEM)
Aug 19 09:55:54 <last journal entry; machine wedged, hard reset required>
```

The displays are the only thing on that GPU, so there was no console to recover from.

**To be clear about what I am and am not claiming:** the bus drop itself is almost certainly an `amdgpu` link-recovery bug, not an Omarchy bug, and I have not proven the blank is what triggered it — see the open question below. The Omarchy-side complaint is narrower and independent: **there is no supported way to turn the blanking off**, so a user who has a good reason to keep panels lit has nowhere to go. This is the first such lockup here in months of uptime; it happened on the first long idle after the 4.0 upgrade.

## Open question / interaction with #7456

#7456 reports that the `{ action = "disable" }` table form is a silent no-op on Hyprland 0.56's Lua dispatcher, so on some systems the blank never actually lands. If that's right, this issue is currently latent for those users — and **fixing #7456 will switch forced, non-optional display-off on for everyone**. That's the case for adding an opt-out alongside that fix rather than after it.

I have not run the destructive confirmation on this machine (dispatching a real DPMS-off risks reproducing the lockup above), so I can't say from here whether the blank landed on 2026-08-18 or whether the outputs went away for the reason described in #7380.

## Suggested fix

Gate the blank on config, defaulting to current behavior so nothing changes for existing users:

```jsonc
// ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json
{ "idle": { "lock": 1800, "screensaver": 86400, "blankOnLock": false } }
```

and in `Service.qml`:

```qml
function runBlank() {
  if (!idleConfig.blankOnLock) return
  if (!blankProcess.running) blankProcess.running = true
}
```

Honoring `OMARCHY_LOCK_ONLY` again in `omarchy-system-lock` would also work, but a `shell.json` key seems more in keeping with how 4.0 does configuration.

## Related

- #7456 — `omarchy-brightness-display off` dispatch is a no-op on the Lua API (directly interacts with this)
- #7380 — shell crashes/relaunches on every wake from idle lock (`FALLBACK` monitor removal, fatal Wayland error) — same signature seen here
- #7145 — lock screen flashes blank from periodic "no outputs" Wayland glitch
- #7478 — lock screen crash-loop after locking, due to DPMS-off

## System info

- Omarchy: 4.0.0-1 (upgraded from 3.x on 2026-08-18)
- Hyprland: 0.56.2-1 · quickshell-git: 0.3.0.r20.g28771c7-1
- Kernel: 7.1.8.arch1-3
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X
- GPU: Radeon RX 9070 (Navi 48) [1002:7550] — drives both displays; iGPU Granite Ridge [1002:13c0] unused
- Monitors: DP-1 3840x2160@144 scale 1.5, DP-3 3840x2160@144 scale 1.5
- Idle config: `{"idle": {"lock": 1800, "screensaver": 86400}}`