Preventing display sleep when watching QuickTime or streaming video ??

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Level 1

8 points

Preventing display sleep when watching QuickTime or streaming video ??

I am still running Leopard (10.5.8) and for some time I have been annoyed by the inability of the OS to keep the display from sleeping when I am watching movies in QuickTime Player or streaming in Safari.
I know that I can use Caffeine to prevent the display from sleeping, but then I have to remember to disable Caffeine. Is there a Preference I am missing that would allow me to disable display sleep when QuickTime is playing or when there is streaming video running ? I understand that streaming might be a a little more difficult given the amount of animated garbage that pops up on pretty much any web page, so I don't know if this is possible, but surely there should be a way to get the OS to recognize when QuickTime is playing a movie......
Thanks !
Apple-Z

Mac Pro 3 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Dec 5, 2009 7:34 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 6, 2009 10:15 AM in response to Apple-Z

Yes, that is correct. I would also set the Put computer to sleep slider to Never, as well. This puts control of sleep and the screensaver entirely with you.

Suggestions should be posted at Feedback.

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Answer 2

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 5, 2009 8:34 PM in response to Apple-Z

Energy Saver preferences can be configured to never put the display to sleep. And you can prevent your screensaver from kicking in via Desktop & Screensaver preferences - configure a hot corner that stops the screensaver from running when the mouse is in that corner.

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Answer 3

Apple-Z Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 5, 2009 9:33 PM in response to Kappy

So if I understand what you are saying is to set the display sleep to "Never", and then using the screen saver hot corner "Disable Screen Saver". That would work, except that I have to remember to slide the mouse to the hot corner to make it work. Also, I would probably try to have simply a black screen for the screen saver to maintain the energy reduction that is provided by the black screen of sleep.
But really, you'd think that Apple would have integrated an option in the QuickTime preferences to prevent sleep while playing... As for streaming video in Safari... maybe a right-click on the streaming window itself that would give a pop-up window with the option of selecting "Disable Sleep While Streaming" or something. It just seems that there is no easy way to prevent the black screen of sleep when watching video, which is somewhat silly given the amount of streaming content these days, as I am watching Calgary play San Jose on the CBC sports website 🙂
Thanks for the tip 🙂 I think I'll send a message to Apple and suggest adding these options and see if they consider it...
Cheers !
Apple-Z

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Answer 4

Apple-Z Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2009 10:34 AM in response to Kappy

Last night I sent a message explaining the display sleep issue to Apple via the "Contact Us" link and then chose the "QuickTime" topic. I've sent feedback to Apple before but have yet to see my requests implemented... If I was a computer geek, I suppose it might be relatively easy to write a bit of code to sort out the sleep issue with QuickTime as well as streaming videos in Safari. Since I haven't found anything in the forum or on the net in general about this problem (other than Caffeine, which in its present incarnation is more of a sledgehammer solution than a fine scalpel...), perhaps I'm the only one who finds this issue to be a problem. I will send some feedback to the Caffeine developers and maybe they will see fit to address it in a future release. It's probably a lot more likely to see results from them than Apple, which no doubt has a long list of priorities to deal with.
Cheers !
Apple-Z

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Answer 5

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Dec 6, 2009 10:47 AM in response to Apple-Z

I would not count on either hearing from Apple's engineers nor seeing a suggestion incorporated into the OS. The engineers would only contact someone regarding a bug that was either difficult to identify or reproduce. Enhancements go on a long list and will only be incorporated if they are determined to make a significant improvement.

Adding to or fixing the OS is sort of like emergency room triage. The more essential the need for treatment the quicker it goes to the top of the list.

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Answer 6

Apple-Z Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 6, 2009 4:56 PM in response to Kappy

Yeah, I understand that, and that's why I was not really counting on anything from them, particularly since the problem does not seem to be one that many people find annoying, since there are few people talking about it on the net. I did send a message to the Caffeine developers, so maybe they will be able to address the issue, but again, if nobody else is asking for a solution to this issue then I might be alone with my concern 😟
Apple-Z

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