Windowserver stopping new iMac from sleeping

Hello, NJH60!

Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! It sounds like you're having an issue putting your iMac to sleep. Check out this article If your Mac won’t go to or stay in sleep. This article will give you steps you can try for issues with your Mac not going to sleep as it should.

Let us know the results and have a great day!

I'm having the same issue on a new Mac Mini M1. When I look at the Energy tab in Activity Monitor I see two processes that can prevent my computer from sleeping: WindowServer and powerd.

I have made sure that "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off" and "Wake for network access" are both unchecked, but I notice that even with those unchecked "pmset -g assertions" never changes. I still see:

 pid 289(powerd): [0x0000002a00018025] 00:00:38 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Powerd - Prevent sleep while display is on"

That line is in the output whether boxes are checked or unchecked in System Preferences' Energy panel.

The final part of the mystery is WindowServer. I have no idea how to change that.

The end result: no matter how things are set in the Energy panel when I click "Sleep" in the Apple menu the system tries to go to sleep but is immediately woken back up. Very frustrating.

Same issue with Mac 2020 model. Looking at process that prevent sleep are sharingd powerd and windows server. Any help would be awesome.

I'm there with the rest of you. Exactly the same issue. Needs a fix.

Rob.