PICO-8 seems to disable the OS screensaver all the time, not just when playing a cart, which is the only time it really needs to, as far as I would guess for most use-cases.

This means if I am using the editor tools to work on a cart, and I walk away for a while, my monitor stays on the whole time, using way more precious electrons than it needs to :O

So feature request: either a config-file option to never disable screensaver, or (ideally) have it only disable the screensaver when running a cart or something :)

I don't know what OS you're using, but I had this problem myself with Windows and found that it happens because PICO-8 is actively using the computer's audio device and many audio drivers are set to prevent the computer from sleeping when they're in use.

Obviously the ideal solution would be for PICO-8 to stop using the audio device when your not using the sound effects or music editor, but you can override the audio driver's request to stay awake in Windows by using the command line.

To list everything that is requesting that Windows stays awake type:

powercfg -requests

You should see something like this:

[DRIVER] Realtek High Definition Audio (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0892&SUBSYS_1043860B&REV_1003\4&165326bb&0&0001)
An audio stream is currently in use.

Then to override it you use the name of the driver like so:

powercfg -REQUESTSOVERRIDE DRIVER "Realtek High Definition Audio" SYSTEM

oh interesting. I don't know if audio keeps it awake in Linux (I use Ubuntu 18.04); I just assumed PICO-8 was using the SDL DisableScreensaver call, on purpose. I do heavily use the SFX and Music editors though, and use an external text editor for the code, so if screensaver was only disabled when the SFX editor is up, it wouldn't do me any good since I pretty much always have that up :p