Filed under: Tips and tricks, Mac 101
Mac 101: Sleepy success for the portably inclined
Welcome back to Mac 101, our series of posts aimed at novice Mac users and veterans who like the occasional refresher.
If you've owned a Mac portable for any length of time, chances are pretty high that you have had your Mac wake up while stowed away in a carrying case. You know the drill as well as I do. As soon as you open your bag of choice, a wave of heat rushes up to your face. And that's when you realize your Mac isn't sleeping and your battery is now mostly dead.
For our friends who are new to the Mac or who may have never used the sleep mode you might be asking yourself why it is important. For road warriors who office at Starbucks or just those that are energy conscientious, it is actually quite impressive functionality. Sleep mode is a low power, energy-saving mode that your Mac uses to extend the life of both batteries and displays. While it's more useful for mobile machines, Sleep mode is available on both portables and desktops.
Sleep mode on the Mac is very similar to system standby in Windows. It is is almost always successful at saving my battery life so when I'm on the road I don't have to worry about opening my Mac to a dead or dying battery.
How does one take advantage of all of this sleepy goodness? Well, there are several ways, some of which depend on your personal configuration. The most common method for putting your Mac portable to sleep (no, not like that) is simply by closing the lid.
Pressing the power button results in a dialog box with buttons for sleeping, restarting, or shutting down your Mac -- click Sleep, or press the S key to select the Sleep button. You can also change your system preferences to make the power button sleep your Mac with a single press.
Simply choosing "Sleep" from the Apple menu will also send your Mac to dream-town. Another neat trick: if your Mac has an infrared (IR) port you can use your Apple Remote to put your computer to sleep. Hold the Play/Pause button to put your Mac to sleep and push any button to wake it back up.
As it turns out, Sleep mode does not always work as expected. If you've had trouble with your Mac waking up without your being aware, you're not alone. In fact, there are several reasons why your Mac might wake up in transit without warning. Apple has even seen-fit to create a support article on the very subject. Three of the more common causes of sleep failure (besides Caffeine) are:
- External hard drives not properly dismounted prior to sleeping
- Bluetooth devices (such as a portable mouse) waking the Mac up
- An active application preventing sleep such as iTunes or QuickTime
Regarding external hard drives, I have found that a drive needs to be unmounted & unplugged prior to putting your Mac to sleep. This prevents the majority of sleep issues caused by external hard drives. Another good idea is to disable the "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" checkbox in Bluetooth System Preferences. A simple step with a powerful outcome -- no longer will your portable Bluetooth mouse awaken your Mac from its slumber.
While some people may not find Sleep mode a key bit of functionality in their Mac, many have found that it is absolutely indispensable.
For other awesome beginner tips, visit our Mac 101 category.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
reallycrazyguy said 1:14AM on 7-22-2009
Some more things: connecting/disconnecting USB devices from the computer will wake up the computer (and it should then go back to sleep if the lid is closed, but it might not).
For putting your computer to sleep in preparation for moving it, it's best to disconnect everything before putting it to sleep. As an exception, I generally won't disconnect an external display (because most of the time I switch between two locations where I use external monitors).
One cool thing I've found I can do (if you are careful about it), you can boot off an external FireWire drive, then put the system to sleep. You can then disconnect the drive, and perhaps switch locations, then reconnect the drive and wake up the computer without a problem. You can't do this with a USB drive because USB is defined to handle the disconnection when it happens (so you kernel panic soon after disconnecting the drive because the Mac wakes up and the drive with vital system files is no longer present).
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freeiphoneapps said 1:18AM on 7-22-2009
Is there anyway to keep your MacBook COMPLETELY on when the lid/display is closed?
_______________
http://twitter.com/freeiphoneapps (please @ reply me the solution)
Thanks :)
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Lucas said 3:07AM on 7-22-2009
Im pretty sure a program called Sleepless does that(google it)
but I would be careful, with the screen closed the computer heats up fast
Tavis said 6:05AM on 7-22-2009
You could try Insomnia...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30315
Use to work for me like a charm, But sometimes it fails. All depends on what Macbook/Pro you have.
Tavis said 7:32PM on 7-23-2009
In fact, For 10.5 try using Caffeine.
http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/
Greg said 12:41PM on 7-22-2009
The last I heard, yes, but no.
There's no software way to do it, but if you can block or remove the magnetic sensor in the left hand side of your MacBook, then it wouldn't sleep when closed. You can find it pretty easily. If you have an apple remote, slide it along the left hand side of your Macbook screen. It'll stop around halfway down. That's where the magnet that triggers sleep mode is. If you take it out, no more sleeping!
Also, it'll void your warranty.
It's also not a good idea, because the MacBook uses the keyboard to dissipate heat. In other words, it runs cooler if it's open. So I wouldn't recommend it anyway.
Hugo said 1:34AM on 7-22-2009
@freeiphoneapps - Try InsomniaX, note that this keeps the hard drive spinning and _will_ overheat your computer if not taken care of properly
@Aron Caffeine doesn't interfere with the sleep of a Mac, I leave Caffeine running all day and I can sleep it with no problems - i think you mean InsomniaX
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junkshow said 1:50AM on 7-22-2009
I've had this problem a lot with my MBP (pre-unibody), including one incident that baked it so thoroughly as to do in my shoddy NVidia 8600M-GT GPU (fortunately covered under the service bulletin). After that, I got serious about figuring out how to avoid the issue, and removing the Smart Sleep Preference Pane has really made a huge improvement for me. YMMV.
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cornelius said 2:19AM on 7-22-2009
iLid might help with the undesired waking issue:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32289
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Michiel said 3:02AM on 7-22-2009
You can even force a hibernate on your mac (usually the mac hibernates when the battery is too low to maintain sleep-mode) using DeepSleep (http://deepsleep.free.fr/). Personally I don't like dashboard-widgets (which this is), but I can't find the application version anymore.
Guess it's easily made into an applescript saved as Application Bundle (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051114140328545&query=safesleep) as well...
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Jase said 5:18AM on 7-22-2009
Quickest way to put your lappy to sleep is probably this shortcut:
Option+Cmd+Eject
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tcbritt said 8:40AM on 7-22-2009
I let the mac wake and sleep while using it at home or office, but completely shut down the system before transporting. I understand that this is better on the computer?
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Aaron said 8:48AM on 7-22-2009
If you select the option to "shut down hard drive when not in use" under energy settings, you don't have to disconnect external drives to put your Mac to sleep and keep it asleep. At least for desktops...
This doesn't work for things like iPods and and iPhones though.
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Alex said 10:58AM on 7-22-2009
My Macbook loses a fair amount of juice (~1-2% every hour of sleep) after it sleeps for a few hours and I open it back up again. So, if I put it to sleep and wake up in the morning I may very well end up with an almost dead battery when I need to quickly do some intensive tasks and I have to connect a power source or else I will lose my unsaved work.
Also, if I drain the battery all the way down and the Macbook goes to sleep, then plug-in a power source, it forces a restart of the system instead of waking up from a "deep sleep" with a ghosted image of the monitor's last image (like it should or used to).
Has anyone else had these problems? Is this due to a Leopard update?
I don't remember this ever happening with older Mac portables and pre-Leopard updates on my Macbook. I installed Battery Update 3.1 for the Macbook and it seems to have reduced the problem slightly but not entirely.
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Noah Ramon said 11:33AM on 7-22-2009
I'm sorry, but I have to snark :
The Macintosh Portable (http://lowendmac.com/pb/macintosh-portable.html) probably isn't what you're talking about...
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alansky said 11:40AM on 7-22-2009
@freeiphoneapps:
Connecting an external display to your Mac laptop also lets you close the lid without putting the Mac to sleep. The screen automatically goes dark to prevent over-heating issues.
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Greg said 12:44PM on 7-22-2009
There was a while when my MacBook wouldn't sleep at all. It was a bug. I think it's been updated, but since I don't put it to sleep every day during the summer, I don't know. I downloaded smart sleep, so it won't save info to the HDD anymore unless the battery is low. That's the only reason you'd need this anyway. Normal sleep saves the battery life, and takes less time to perform, meaning less chance of it staying awake when it should be sleeping.
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Chuck said 1:35PM on 7-22-2009
Hey TUAW,
I think I may find HALF the answer to the wake-up-during-sleep issue.
Apparently, the MBP use some sort of magnet to detect when the lid is closed. When I carried my MBP in the bag, this magnet may get moved and the MBP will wake up. The solution: use a Terminal tool called "pmset". This is a Power Management setting tool. All I have to do is type:
sudo pmset lidwake 0
This will prevent the MBP from waking up when the lid is open.
I said HALF of the problem because when my MBP is connected to a USB mouse, it'll wake up when I move the mouse around. I have NOT a way to prevent USB from waking up my MBP.
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chris.wanja said 12:01AM on 7-23-2009
I have found that plugging in a USB printer will wake. Or removing one just as well. I think there is something with the PMU and the USB detection that wakes it from sleep.
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alexnikle said 1:51AM on 7-31-2009
i am not sure, but i think this may can help you guys
http://www.leawo.com/twitter/
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