Get idle time of machine

Question

Is there a way to get the idle time of the machine, as in the amount of time the machine has not been used for, in minutes/hours using Powershell or a batch file?

Answer 1

Here's a PowerShell solution that uses the Win32 API GetLastInputInfo.

Add-Type @'
using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace PInvoke.Win32 {

    public static class UserInput {

        [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError=false)]
        private static extern bool GetLastInputInfo(ref LASTINPUTINFO plii);

        [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
        private struct LASTINPUTINFO {
            public uint cbSize;
            public int dwTime;
        }

        public static DateTime LastInput {
            get {
                DateTime bootTime = DateTime.UtcNow.AddMilliseconds(-Environment.TickCount);
                DateTime lastInput = bootTime.AddMilliseconds(LastInputTicks);
                return lastInput;
            }
        }

        public static TimeSpan IdleTime {
            get {
                return DateTime.UtcNow.Subtract(LastInput);
            }
        }

        public static int LastInputTicks {
            get {
                LASTINPUTINFO lii = new LASTINPUTINFO();
                lii.cbSize = (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(typeof(LASTINPUTINFO));
                GetLastInputInfo(ref lii);
                return lii.dwTime;
            }
        }
    }
}
'@

And an example usage:

for ( $i = 0; $i -lt 10; $i++ ) {
    Write-Host ("Last input " + [PInvoke.Win32.UserInput]::LastInput)
    Write-Host ("Idle for " + [PInvoke.Win32.UserInput]::IdleTime)
    Start-Sleep -Seconds (Get-Random -Minimum 1 -Maximum 5)
}