I've never really understood the desire to use the button on the display to turn off monitors - does allowing the monitors to be switched off by the OS not solve basically the same problem ?
I leave my PC running 24/7 pretty much, so at night I want the monitors turned off so it doesn't illuminate the whole living room (which I can see from the bedroom - it is a small apartment).
I used to turn them off with the button on the monitor (when all my monitors were DVI), so if the mouse was moved by accident during the night it wouldn't wake the monitors up. Right now I have to let it go to sleep normally, and then hope there isn't some strange vibration that is big enough to trigger a wake.
Every monitor I've owned since the early 2000s will switch itself off (or at least go into a standby state where the screen is entirely off and there's a tiny blinky LED indicating that it's still powered) after a period of inactivity. I know some monitors never give up waiting for a signal but at this point maybe it'd be simpler to treat yourself to a new monitor?
Edit: Oh, you're talking about things waking your computer up? Maybe turn off 'wake on USB'? Although that's less convenient otherwise. I know when my desktop computer is fully hibernated, mouse motions don't wake it but button presses do. And you can get into this state (assuming Windows 8+) by right clicking on the Windows icon / 'start' button and selecting 'sleep'.
Disabling wake from USB is not a good idea given I have a USB keyboard and mouse.
Essentially this is a convenience thing, it used to work perfectly fine, then they added HDCP to make things less convenient.
Like I said, I'd be fine if the software (well Windows in my case) has a switch to disable HDCP and restore the old functionality of always assuming there's a monitor there.
In my experience, Windows 10 seemed to have issues with the "Wake on USB" setting about 6-8 months ago. No matter if I let my computer hibernate or forcibly sleep my computer, it would turn on within 20-30 minutes of me being away. No matter what settings I set, this would happen constantly.
I came up with a trick for this. Wrote a little script for windows (I'm sure you could do the same thing for linux) that just sends the "sleep" command to the monitors at will.
I can dig it up for you if you want it when I get home.
EDIT: Upon re-read this doesn't really solve your accidental wake up problem. Oops.
> I've never really understood the desire to use the button on the display to turn off monitors - does allowing the monitors to be switched off by the OS not solve basically the same problem ?
Right now, my monitor is in my bedroom. If I let the OS shut off the monitor, it still shows a little white pulsing light to show it's in sleep mode. That's really annoying when I'm trying to sleep.
And my monitor has an extremely bright pulsing white LED. I have a piece of orange electrical tape over it, and it is still on the bright side. Dell e2414h if anyone's curious.
I used to turn them off with the button on the monitor (when all my monitors were DVI), so if the mouse was moved by accident during the night it wouldn't wake the monitors up. Right now I have to let it go to sleep normally, and then hope there isn't some strange vibration that is big enough to trigger a wake.
Edit: Better language and more info.