How to Manage Your Mac When It Automatically Goes to Sleep

 You might have noticed that when you leave your Mac on hold for a while, its screen goes black. Your device must rest after it’s been put to long durations of work. With the launch of recent versions of macOS, it has also presented sleep-mode options under the System Preferences, which is interesting.

Don’t know how to manage your Mac while it automatically goes to sleep? Read along to learn more about the same.

It is important to note here that you cannot do much about your sleeping Mac. When you close the top of your Mac without turning it off, it goes to sleep which saves battery life. Thus, if you don’t want the same for your Mac, you’ll have to connect to an external display via third-party applications to keep it awake.

Set a Sleep Timer

If you’re finding a method to configure when your Mac sleeps, you might want to visit the ‘Energy Saver’ panel. The steps to do the same are:

1. Tap on the Apple logo on the top left corner of the screen.
2. A pop-up menu will open. Select the ‘System Preferences’ option.
3. A new window will open. Select the ‘Energy Saver’ tab from the menu.

In older versions of macOS, there were two respective sliders to configure your Mac to automatically sleep. One was to set when the display goes off, while the other was to set when your system goes to sleep. Therefore, now Apple has combined the two sliders to let the system go to sleep by default, which saves energy.

Unluckily, in the recent version of Mac like 10.15 Catalina, it doesn’t appear to be instantly obvious, the method to get your Mac to sleep after a specific period. However, this can be sorted. Whatever process you follow in Energy Saver relies upon whether you want your Mac to sleep or not.

Set Your Mac to Sleep After a Certain Period

In case you want your Mac to sleep automatically after some time, go to the Energy Saver window. Drag the slider for ‘Turn display off after’ and set it as per your preference. Also, unmark the checkbox for ‘Prevent the computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off.’ Next, close the window to save the changes.

You’ll notice that the display will go black after the selected time, and the Mac will sleep following the same.

Turning off Mac’s Display Without Sleeping

If you want your display to go dark but don’t want your Mac to sleep, again push the slider to set a specific time. Also, make sure to mark the checkbox for ‘Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off’ this time. A new dialog box will appear warning you about the energy used. Hit the ‘Ok’ button for the same.

If there’s a possibility that you don’t want your Mac’s display to go off nor want it to sleep, set the slider to ‘Never.’

What to Do if the Mac Doesn’t Sleep Automatically?

If your Mac refuses to sleep automatically, the reason behind it might be some active process going on. Therefore, one method to check if there is an active process going on your macOS is to visit the ‘Activity Monitor’ utility.

Go to the ‘Activity Monitor’ window and select the ‘Energy’ tab at the top of it. Locate the Preventing Sleep column and check for the process under the same. If any activity mentions ‘Yes,’ your Mac won’t sleep until or unless you stop that program. You can either wait for the process to get completed, or quit the same.

Once your Mac goes to the ‘Sleep’ mode, it’ll enter ‘Standby,’ which exactly functions like the Hibernation mode in Windows PC.

Hi, I’m Kinsley. I’m a web developer living in Pontiac, USA. I am a fan of web development, programming, and entrepreneurship. I’m also interested in innovation. You can read my blog such as, howtouk.com

Source: How to Manage Your Mac When It Automatically Goes to Sleep