You know the drill. Close your laptop's lid or select "Sleep" from the Apple Menu and it does just that - it goes into low-power mode, or "sleep." That's just not good enough. Check out SmartSleep, which puts your MacBook or MacBook Pro into either Sleep Mode or Hibernate Mode, depending on several factors.
For example, if your battery is at 20%, SmartSleep puts your Mac to sleep and hibernate. If it's down to 5%, it goes right to hibernate mode, preserving items in memory. Otherwise, it just sleeps as it typically does.
Finally, you can select any of these settings as the default for your machine. SmartSleep is free.
[Via Download Squad]











Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-28-2008 @ 7:04PM
Joshua Ochs said...
"Otherwise, it just sleeps as it typically does."
Um, the default is to *always* hibernate on MacBook/MacBook Pro's - something I find very annoying. If this can put me into normal sleep above 20% battery, and hibernate below 20%, then I will be a very happy camper.
Reply
2-28-2008 @ 7:36PM
tukan said...
Yep, have to agree, especially after I installed 4GB of memory it takes ages to fall asleep :P
3-04-2008 @ 1:33AM
TheZero said...
Not Correct. The MacBook goes into sleep mode when you close the lid and wakes up when you open it. That's why it takes 1-2 seconds to wake up.
But when you close the lid it also saves the system state (it takes about 30 seconds depending on amount of RAM) in case it has to go into a deep-sleep mode (hibernate) when the battery goes flat while sleeping.
BTW Your lappy's harddrive does not like it very much when you move it while it's saving state. You should only move it when the LED heartbeat (pulse) starts.
2-29-2008 @ 7:33AM
Joakim Bergman said...
That's exactly what it does. If your battery has 20 % or more power, it will go to sleep and if below 20 % it will hibernate and sleep.
2-28-2008 @ 7:43PM
Ed said...
Somewhat off topic, but does anyone know of a menu bar applet thing to quickly disable sleep and prevent the screen dimming itself? It's very annoying when watching internet videos...
Reply
2-28-2008 @ 7:51PM
Adam said...
There's the perfect Freeware app for you :)
http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/
2-28-2008 @ 7:52PM
Ross said...
Ed, if you're on a laptop, just go to the battery menu, choose "Open Energy Saver" and set all the sliders to maximum. That will be your "custom" setting on the menu. Then if you're watching a video, just click on the battery menu and choose "custom." When you're done, just go back to the menu and choose "normal" or whatever you normally keep it set to.
2-28-2008 @ 7:57PM
Ed said...
Thanks Adam and Ross. Caffeine looks just whats needed. It's not for me but for my parents, so Ross's solution is fine, but a little more cryptic. If the settings are changed in the Energy Saver pane, it isn't obvious from the menu. Ideally, there would be a way to make custom profiles...
2-28-2008 @ 10:06PM
Billy said...
In your screen saver preferences, click "Hot Corners" on the bottom left. You can set it so that if you drag your mouse to a certain corner, your screen saver will be disabled. I think that should stop sleep too.
2-28-2008 @ 10:12PM
5cents said...
Deepsleep widget'it
Reply
2-28-2008 @ 11:42PM
ramond said...
To sleep just your display, e.g. on the iMac use:
http://www.imalc.com/Site/SleepDisplay.html