How to Turn Off PC Automatically Using Shutdown Timer in Windows 10 Ravi Singh How

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Summary: This article explains three different ways to automatically shut down a PC
after some time using the shutdown timer in Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1,
Windows 8, and Windows 7 PC. You can follow these methods to auto-shutdown PC for
one time or regularly schedule a shutdown timer for every day, based on your needs.

Consider this,

It’s late at night but the movie, game, or any other file is still downloading or
installing and may take a few hours to finish. However, you need to get some sleep
also and can’t stay wake up. What would you do? You can either pause the download
and resume it later if it supports resume or let it dowload the file that will keep
the system running for the entire night, wasting energy and resources
unnecessarily.

In such cases, I use the shutdown timer to shut down the system automatically after
the desired time. Similarly, you can also put a sleep timer on your Windows PC to
automatically shut it down after an hour or so before you get to bed using the
inbuilt Windows utilities or by installing third-party software.

Contents hide
Methods to Put Shutdown Sleep Timer in Windows PC
Method 1: Using Command Prompt
Method 2: Using Run Command (Windows+R)
Method 3: Schedule Regular Shutdown using Task Scheduler
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METHODS TO PUT SHUTDOWN SLEEP TIMER IN WINDOWS PC
Below, we have discussed 4 different methods to apply a shutdown timer on your
Windows PC to shut it down after a specified number of minutes or hours, based on
your needs.

METHOD 1: USING COMMAND PROMPT

In Command Prompt, you can run a simple command to start a shutdown timer that will
automatically shut down the PC after a specified number of seconds. The steps are
as follow,

Open Command Prompt as administrator

Then execute following command in the Command Prompt window to start the shutdown
timer
shutdown -s -t <number of seconds>

Press the Enter key. A notification will be displayed with time to shutdown.

You can use a hours to seconds converter to get the values in seconds and exceute
the command. You may also use this formulae to calculate seconds.
Hours to Seconds
Seconds=hours*3600
For instance, 2hours is 2*3600= 7200 seconds or 120 minutes
Minutes to Seconds
Seconds=minutes*60
Fort instance, 10 minutes is 10*60=600 seconds
In case youw ant to change the timer or abort automatic shutdown timer, execute
following command,
shutdown -a

The logoff/shutdown will be canceled and now you can start a new shutdown timer.
METHOD 2: USING RUN COMMAND (WINDOWS+R)
Instead of running the shutdown command in Command Prompt to start a system
shutdown timer, you can run the command directly in RUN dialog box. The steps are
as follow,

On your Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, or 11 PC, press WIndows+R.

In the Open: box, type shutdown -s -t -<number of seconds> and press the Enter key
or click ‘OK.’

A notification will be displayed with time to shutdown/logoff.

Again, to cancel the shutdown time and start new, press Windows+R and type shutdown
-a

Click Enter or press OK to stop the automatic shutdown timer.

METHOD 3: SCHEDULE REGULAR SHUTDOWN USING TASK SCHEDULER

If you want to add a shutdown schedule to turn off a system automatically every day
or weekly at a specified time, you can use the Task Scheduler. This way, you don’t
need to remember or set the timer manually every time.

The steps are as follow,

Press Windows+S and type Task Schedule. Click on the Task Scheduler.

Navigate to Actions and click Create Basic Task…

Give this task a name and description and then click Next.

Choose the Trigger. Based on your need, you can choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, One
time, When the computer starts, When I log on or When a specified event is logged
as a start to trigger automatic shutdown. Then click Next.

Chosoe a start date and time when to trigger the auto-shutdown and click Next.

Keep the default Start a program selected and click Next.

Click the ‘Browse‘ button.