Q: What is the keyboard shortcut to sleep display on the Macbook Air?

What I do is to hit the power button in the upper right on my Macbook Air.  Then I'll hit the "s" key to sleep, "Return" key to shutdown, "Esc" key to cancel, or the "r" key to reboot.  If you want to require your password when waking up, be sure to change it in your system preferences --> Security --> require password immedaiately after sleep or screen saver.

Press the power button and the "S," that's it.  Short and sweet!  But then again, didn't read the question correctly.  Hope someone finds the answer.

Thanks appletart, i think, at least for me, a sweet and very appliable answer on the very first question in this conversation.

Glad it works for you.  Just hope I can get my MBA reconnect to my wifi after sleep.  Update 10.7.3 didn't work as advertised, perhaps the next update!  Aloha.

No. It isn't. And it's a dismissive and ultimately disrespectful jab ad the original poster (the only one that can assess if the reply is adequate).

The OP was asking for a shortcut to put the display to sleep since the "Normal" one doesn't apply to a MBA air. How can telling him to put the whole computer to sleep be a sensible answer? Especially when half the people ignored the question and answered this and were properly scolded for not paying attention and being less than helpful.

Still, at least they're attempting to help, even if they don't really answer the question. You're justifying their incorrect answer and behaviour, though.

This thread really is about how much people take care...

There are workarounds (like the already reported hot corner plus modifier key). Here is a nice overview:

http://www.midwesternmac.com/blogs/jeff-geerling/force-sleep-display-2010-2011

Another way: Download BetterTouchTool (free) and configure it to whatever you want.

E.g. Go Simple->Gestures->Keyboard tab

under the  prefefined actions tab there is a "sleep display" item. I configured it to the key Control-Shift-Backspace. That feels almost like Control-Shift-Eject.

control+shift+fn+power button

Very handy: find all keyboard shortcuts here  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343

the best way is,

click power button

click s (sleep shorcut)

To put the display to sleep, just hit: control+shift+power. 

No need to add the fn key to the sequence as someone mentioned above.

Better solution is to install Better Touch Tool, then assign whatever global shortcut (keyboard, trackpad, mouse or remote) you like to be the 'sleep display'/'sleep computer' buttons.

I personally use cmd+alt+bacspace

Hope this helps.

Thanks, works perfectly.

All of you guys replying with instructions of how to sleep the machine rather than the display should be ashamed, read posts in future- you're not helping, this thread was incredibly irritating to read through and find my answer.

BetterTouchTool is the way to go for this it seems, but for my use case at least, 'sleep display' isn't appropriate, it renders your machine unusable on connected AirPlay devices, which is what I was looking for.

If you want to 'sleep display' your machine so that it isn't glowing whilst you're using AirPlay, this isn't going to cut it, the device becomes unresponsive- much like regular sleep it seems, I'm not entire sure what the difference is.

Since I wanted to just stop my MacBook Air glowing whilst I'm AirPlaying, I used BetterTouchTool to bind 16x brightness down and 16x keyboard lights down actions to a single key (I chose the key beneath ESC) and similarly, shift + that key to do the opposite. Effectively making my screen dim to black, and keyboard lights turn off whilst still leaving AirPlay working fine so I can watch streams on my AppleTV

Just to confirm it looks like this: http://cl.ly/image/0d0g0Q0A3C3L

Works great!

TFE2's solution using Command + Hotcorners was great solution for me....thanks.

ctrl + shift + power works for me on my macbook air.