How to Continue Using Your Windows 11 Laptop After Closing the Lid

No other device can match the portability and convenience of a laptop. If you want to buy and use a laptop for business purposes or like to occasionally consume information on a larger screen than your laptop, you may want to connect it to an external display.

This is where the problem arises since you will most likely want to close your laptop’s lid without shutting it down completely. By default, the Windows 11 lid close action is set to put your laptop to sleep when you close the lid.

As you can imagine, having an open laptop lid sitting on your desk while connected to a newly purchased external monitor is not an ideal situation, nor a comfortable situation to be exposed to. So, we are going to show you how to customize Windows 11 lid close action to solve this problem.

You don’t have to put up with this cruel condition and you can close your laptop’s lid without putting it to sleep or interfering with its operation. Let’s see how you can achieve this, just after understanding what hibernate and sleep modes are.

Are hibernation and sleep the same thing?

Two computing modes that should be distinguished are sleep and hibernation modes, which are frequently used interchangeably but are not the same thing in reality.

Sleep mode is a power-saving mode that allows activities to restart once the device is fully charged.

Hibernate mode is meant to save power, but it differs from sleep mode in terms of what happens to your data. The documents and files you are currently working on are stored in RAM, requiring minimal power in the process.

The former effectively accomplishes the same thing as hibernate mode, except it stores information on your hard drive, allowing you to shut down your computer and save all the power it would have consumed.

When you turn your computer back on, the hard drive lets you pick up right where you left off. Hibernate is primarily intended for laptops, and it’s most effective when you don’t plan to use your device for an extended period of time.

But now, let’s see how to easily customize Windows 11 lid close action settings and get the desired results.

How to change lid close action in Windows 11?

1. Keep the monitor on when the laptop is closed

1. To do nothing when the laptop lid is closed in Windows 11, open the Windows search function then type Control Panel and open the highest result.
2. Here, go to Power options.
3. Then select the Choose what closing the lid does option to change the lid closing action of Windows 11 when opening your laptop.
4. Here you can select the Do not do anything option under the On the battery section and Branch one, in order to keep your monitor on when the laptop lid is closed. For more information on other options, see Microsoft’s page on these actions.

When your laptop is connected to an external monitor, you can now close the lid and continue working without having to worry about it sleeping or hibernating. Note that this mode of operation is called clamshell mode and refers to a working laptop with the lid closed.

What can I do if the cover customization settings are missing?

1. Note that this solution also works for the missing lid close action in Windows 10 error. Open your Command Prompt app by typing ordered inside of Windows search function.
2. Next, type or copy-paste the following command and press Walk in To fix missing lid close action in Windows 11/10: REG ADD HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPowerPowerSettings4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e73475ca83367-6e45-459f-a27b-476b1d01c936 /v Attributes /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f
3. If you also want to add the missing Windows 11 lid open action type or paste the following command and press Walk in: REG ADD HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlPowerPowerSettings4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e734799ff10e7-23b1-4c07-a9d1-5c3206d741b4 /v Attributes /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f
4. To customize the lid opening action, access the Power options section inside Control Panel and choose Change plan settings next to your current plan.
5. Then click on Modify advanced power settings and expand the Power buttons and cover option to fine-tune the configuration.

You should now be able to change the Windows 11 lid close action on startup settings as we showed in the first solution, as well as change the lid open action configuration.

Also, if you’re having trouble connecting a second monitor, check out our guide on what to do when your laptop isn’t detecting the second monitor.

You can also check out our article on how to fix random external monitor behavior like turning off or disconnecting.

Please let us know what you think in the comments section below as well as if you have any other solutions in mind. Thanks for reading!

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