You're in a Teams or Zoom call, listening and watching, hands off the keyboard — and Windows decides you've gone idle and puts the PC to sleep, dropping the call. It happens because Windows judges "idle" from keyboard and mouse input only, and a meeting app doesn't reliably tell it to stay awake. Here's exactly why it happens, and how PowerDoze detects the meeting app automatically — Teams, Zoom, Webex, Slack, and Discord — to hold the machine awake until the call ends.
Quick answer: Windows treats a meeting where you're just listening as idle and sleeps on its normal timer, which kills the call. PowerDoze's meeting detection (Pro) recognizes when Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Slack, or Discord is the app in front and holds the PC awake until you leave the call — then restores your normal sleep schedule on its own. Browser calls like Google Meet aren't detected by app name; add your browser to the keep-awake whitelist for those.
Windows has exactly one signal for "is anyone here": how long since the last keyboard press or mouse move. That's it — no camera, no microphone, no "is a call running" check. During a meeting you're mostly listening, watching a shared screen, maybe taking the occasional note — long stretches with no input at all. To Windows, that's indistinguishable from an empty chair, so the idle clock keeps climbing until it hits the sleep timeout and the machine drops offline mid-call.
In theory a video app can ask Windows to stay awake while a call is live, but in practice it's inconsistent — it depends on the app, the version, and whether the call is fullscreen or in a background window. The result is a familiar mess: you're presenting, you stop clicking for a few minutes, and your own screen goes dark or your PC sleeps and boots everyone out.
These get lumped together, but they're separate timers with separate fixes, and it's worth knowing which one is actually biting you:
| What happens | What's really going on | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| PC sleeps, call drops, you go offline | Sleep timeout (standby-timeout) fired while you were idle | Meeting detection or keep-awake whitelist |
| Screen goes black but the call keeps running | Screen-off timeout (monitor-timeout) — a different timer | Raise the screen-off timeout |
| Screen dims or locks while you're away from the desk | PowerDoze away mode, or a Windows lock timer | Away mode pauses itself during meetings |
The one that boots you out of a call is sleep — the whole machine goes offline. That's what meeting detection is built to stop. If instead your display just blanks while the call keeps going, that's the separate screen-off timer — raise it in the Windows sleep and timeout settings. Knowing which timer fired saves you chasing the wrong fix.
The oldest workaround: nudge the mouse every few minutes, or leave something jiggling the cursor for you. It keeps the idle timer from ever reaching the sleep timeout — but you have to remember to do it, and if you forget for one long stretch of a call, you're offline anyway.
Best for: A one-off call when you don't want to install anything. Limit: Manual, easy to forget, and it does nothing the moment you stop.
Run powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0 or drag the sleep slider to Never, and the machine won't sleep during a call. But it also won't sleep the rest of the day — so it burns power overnight and every time you actually walk away, unless you remember to change it back after every meeting.
Best for: A machine you never want sleeping anyway. Limit: Blunt — it disables sleep everywhere, not just during calls, so you lose the energy savings the rest of the time.
PowerDoze watches which app is in the foreground and recognizes the common meeting apps from a built-in list: Microsoft Teams (old and new), Zoom, Cisco Webex, Slack, and Discord. The moment one of them is the app in front, it holds the PC awake so it can't sleep mid-call — and it matches on the app itself, so it works whether the meeting window is fullscreen or just sitting on your desktop. When the meeting app is no longer in front, your normal sleep schedule comes back automatically, usually within a few seconds. Nothing to toggle before or after — join the call, leave the call, done.
Best for: Anyone who's on Teams or Zoom all day and is tired of babysitting the mouse. Honest limits: It detects apps by their process name, so Google Meet and other in-browser calls aren't recognized — the foreground app there is just "Chrome" or "Edge," and PowerDoze can't see which website a tab is showing. For those, add your browser to the keep-awake whitelist instead. The built-in list also can't be edited in the app yet, so if your call app isn't one of the five, the whitelist is the way to cover it. And this keeps the PC awake — it doesn't stop Windows' separate screen-off timer from blanking the display.
Being precise here saves disappointment. Meeting detection does one job well and leaves two things to other settings:
monitor-timeout, which meeting detection doesn't touch. If your display blanks during long calls, raise the screen-off timeout in Windows' sleep settings.Bottom line: if your problem is "the call dropped because the PC slept," meeting detection is the fix. If it's "the screen went dark but the call kept going," that's the screen-off timer, and it's a one-line change in the normal Windows settings.
Automatic meeting detection is part of PowerDoze Pro (a one-time purchase, not a subscription). It sits alongside the keep-awake whitelist — the whitelist lets you keep the PC awake for any app you name (browsers for Google Meet, a media player, a long render), while meeting detection handles the five built-in meeting apps automatically without you configuring anything. Use both: the whitelist for what you name, meeting detection for the calls that just work out of the box.
Honest note: The keep-awake whitelist is what to reach for when a call runs in a browser tab, since app-name detection can't see inside the browser. Meeting detection is the zero-setup layer on top for the apps it already knows.
Windows decides you're idle from keyboard and mouse activity only. In a meeting you mostly listen and watch without touching either, so the idle timer keeps climbing and eventually puts the PC to sleep, which drops the call. Meeting apps don't reliably tell Windows to stay awake, so it sleeps as if you'd walked away.
PowerDoze ships with a built-in list: Microsoft Teams (old and new), Zoom, Cisco Webex, Slack, and Discord. When one of those is the app in the foreground, it keeps the PC from going to sleep. It matches on the app's process name, so it works whether the meeting is fullscreen or windowed.
Not through automatic detection. Google Meet runs in a browser tab, so the foreground app is Chrome or Edge, not Meet itself — PowerDoze can't tell which website a browser tab is showing. For Google Meet, or any browser-based call, add your browser to the keep-awake whitelist instead.
No. Meeting detection keeps the computer from going to sleep — it doesn't change the separate "turn off screen" timeout, so Windows can still blank the display on its own schedule. If you also use PowerDoze's away mode (dim, privacy overlay, and lock when you step away), meeting detection pauses those while the meeting app is in front. To stop Windows itself from blanking the screen, raise the screen-off timeout.
Not from the app today — the built-in list detects the common meeting apps automatically, and there's no in-app editor to add your own yet. If your call app isn't on the list, the keep-awake whitelist covers any process you name, so use that in the meantime.
Yes. When the meeting app is no longer the foreground window, PowerDoze restores your normal sleep schedule automatically, usually within a few seconds. There's nothing to switch off — close or leave the meeting and it reverts on its own.
Stop babysitting the mouse to keep a call alive. PowerDoze detects Teams, Zoom, Webex, Slack, and Discord automatically and holds the PC awake until the meeting ends — then goes back to your normal sleep schedule on its own. Fully on-device: no telemetry, no cloud upload.
Download free for Windows 10/11See also: Screen dims during video · Dim and lock when you're away · Why Windows won't sleep · All features