USB/Thunderbolt & Energy Saver/Sleep/power settings

This tip is to inform people that an ongoing third party issue with Energy Saver has existed since the beginning.

Many devices that are powered by the computer will have issues when the computer is put to sleep.

Look at your Apple menu (the Apple logo in the upper left corner)-> System Settings on Ventura (released October 24, 2022) or later, or Apple menu -> System Preferences in Monterey (all Mac OSes released 2001 to October 24, 2022) and earlier for Power, Energy Saver or Sleep. Under it is a checkbox called Put hard drives to sleep. When this is checked, Energy Saver will put all peripheral ports on a lower power mode until the next restart. This setting affects clamshell mode as well.

Clamshell mode is when you close the screen lid of a notebook computer and are still able to use it thanks to an external display.

Manual sleep from the Apple menu, or screen corners, or security preferences to log off when there is a period of inactivity will also make the machine go into low powered mode.

If you have USB devices that don't have their external source of power these can suddenly leave the machine in a frozen state trying to wake up, sometimes also cause the machine to automatically restart with a kernel panic. Sometimes the functionality of the cable might be limited. Some have reported that Thunderbolt 5 is not behaving properly. This may be a symptom of the same problem.

Thunderbolt 3 and later are coupled with USB buses and can suffer the same symptoms as USB due to this feature.

For many of these third party devices, the bugs are able to be resolved with an updated firmware, that may only be available to be applied while running Microsoft Windows connecting to the device. Check with the manufacturer.

When buying devices that exhibit the feature, please inform the manufacturer that a firmware is needed to address these issues. Firmware is a programmable chip on the device that instructs the device how to handle low power situations and different connectivity on the peripheral connecting technology.

These issues are crossplatform. I for instance had an HP 840 G10 Notebook whcih would not connect through HP G5 USB-C docking station a video signal to a second display once it was upgraded to Windows 11. When I hooked up a Dell WD-15 docking station to the same HP, it could do it on HDMI, which the HP docking station could not. And the Dell had its firmware updated from the last time I used. Remakably, both docking stations had AC/DC power of their own. That same Dell Docking station would with older firmwares also not communicate to external displays the display signal. So that proves the point it is the hub that needs addressing, and not necessarily the computer. In summary:

Dell Latitude 5350 13" Notebook + Dell WD-15 Docking Station with older firmware = no external display support, no power through docking station, and no ethernet

Dell Latitude 5350 13 + Dell WD-15 with new firmware = fixed.

HP 840 G10 Notebook + HP G5 USB-C Docking station + Windows 10 = HDMI support worked from docking station

HP 840 G10 + HP G5 USB-C + Windows 11 = no HDMI support on docking station

HP 840 G10 + Dell WD-15 (same one used on the Dell Latitude before) + Windows 11 = HDMI support worked from docking station

Note: I have not tried to find a firmware update for the HP docking station, which I borrowed from the company I work for. The Dell docking station I had purchased myself a long time ago.