macOS sleep doesn't really put machine to sleep, only turns display off

Question

macOS sleep doesn't really put machine to sleep, only turns display off

Hi everyone,

I've noticed a couple of years ago macOS's sleep mode was changed:

Previously it had been the real deal that put all components to rest, turning everything silent, leaving only the power light breathing.

At some point (I don't remember when, perhaps between 10.12 and 10.13) it changed to this new weird mode that does nothing except turn the screen off.

Now it's important to note that I am not talking about power nap or malfunctioning power management settings. I'm fine with the option of letting my Mac occasionally wake up, "sleepwalk" and come back to bed, and I'm not experiencing malfunctions where fans go crazy in sleep mode. My problem is that every Mac I know (except MacBooks when they are physically closed) only pretends to sleep (screen turns off) while making all the same noise as before, and even without noise: It's just wrong that the functionality doesn't do what it says it does.

Initially I found it infuriating, then I kind of let it slide, and now it is extremely infuriating again because for data migration purposes I have an Akitio 4-Bay attached to my Mac and the fan is just noisy if you really want to relax or sleep in the same room. On earlier versions of macOS I remember the 4-Bay's fan did in fact turn off when I put the Mac to sleep.

I googled, I've tried the Terminal commands "shutdown -s" and "pmset sleepnow", but both of them don't do anything more than that ridiculous menu item "sleep". The actual drives even keep spinning, not just the fan. Also I can keep doing everything on the command line, indicating that the machine is fully awake. What does that have to do with a machine that is sleeping? Praise Linux that you can just "suspend".

And the weirdest thing to me is that I can't find anyone else addressing this, even though this is the case for all Macs I know, and that would be around 50 machines. Are people just ignoring that, or not noticing fan sounds in general?

Sorry for the rant, I just don't understand the twisted logic here, and it is a real problem for some cases. And while we're on the subject: Wake on LAN (even though activated) has never worked on any Mac I've known. Any ideas regarding that by any chance?

Posted on Mar 3, 2021 5:01 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eric--F

Community Specialist

Mar 5, 2021 7:50 PM in response to dinoschachten

Hey there dinoschachten,

From what we understand you're having trouble putting your Mac to sleep as expected.

Do you have any specific apps running in the background when this seems to occur?

Are all your apps updated in the Mac App Store?

Are you running the most recent version of macOS compatible with your Mac?

Take a look at all the steps listed in the articles below. You can also try disconnecting any devices connected to the Mac and resetting your SMC.

Upgrade to macOS Big Sur

If your Mac won’t go to or stay in sleep

How to reset the SMC of your Mac

If you continue to run into issues you can reach out to Apple Support to help take a closer look.

Get Support

Warm regards.

Reply

Answer 2

steve626

Level 6

11,309 points

Mar 5, 2021 9:14 PM in response to dinoschachten

Have you checked Energy Saver Preferences? There are options there you can select or de-select that will keep drives running, etc.

My experience has been the opposite to yours -- the computers I have access to do truly sleep. This is actually important for laptops, otherwise they would overheat inside closed laptop bags. Both the laptops I use and the desktops (iMacs) do fully sleep. I can easily tell the difference because I can configure them to only blank the screen but not sleep and with that setting, it wakes up faster with no noise, but when the entire machine is sleeping, there is a very short but definitely perceptible delay and a slight noise when the computer comes on and lightly hums. This is actually very noticeable with iMacs, more subtle with MacBook Airs or MacBook Pros.

What do you have connected to your computers? Disconnect everything and make sure Energy Saver is set to completely sleep the computer. Also, as was suggested by another reply, reset the SMC to fix sleep issues.

You are really using 50 machines and none of them sleep? Regardless of the number, sometimes people notice common issues among computers that they have similarly configured. So they all share the same behavior. Have you installed any utilities that might be running in the background, or change sleeping behavior? Anti-virus that operate in the background? Cloud backup utilities -- they can run for days at low levels to complete uploads?

Reply

macOS sleep doesn't really put machine to sleep, only turns display off

Similar questions