XScreenSaver autostart ====================== There is an example desktop file for XDG-compliant session managers in /usr/share/xscreensaver called xscreensaver-daemon.desktop If you want XScreenSaver to autostart in your sessions just copy it to ~/.config/autostart , or if you want it for all users copy it to /etc/xdg/autostart . If you don't need to modify it, consider soft-linking it instead of copying, so that future improvements will take effect automatically. The use of a NotShowIn option can be useful if you install the desktop file globally but have several desktop environments installed. For instance, if you have nuked gnome-screensaver and replaced it by xscreensaver, using a desktop file globally will be handy, but in that case you should use NoShowIn=KDE; just to avoid starting it in KDE sessions. If you use xscreensaver in other xdg-compliant environments but gnome-screensaver and kscreensaver for Gnome and KDE, using NoShowIn=KDE;GNOME; might suit your purpose. Note that the example desktop file does not start the daemon directly but via a wrapper script. This wrapper is intended to set the newLoginCommand resource correctly depending on the currently running display manager. To have xscreensaver started by systemd, the user can run: systemctl --user enable xscreensaver