Cannot enter sleep mode with ESC on screen lock

Hey wok1909! I had this issue too! On my Macbook Pro M3 after locking and pressing the esc key it puts my screen and external screens to sleep. However, on my work Macbook Pro M2, pressing esc in the lock screen does nothing.

A little workaround I found was setting one of my Hot Corners to 'Put Display to Sleep'. I find that I never use the bottom right corner, so now instead of creating a quicknote I can lock my screen and put my displays to sleep instantly!

You can do this by going into settings > search for hot corners > click 'Hot Corner Shortcuts' and set your preferred corner to 'Put Display to Sleep'.

Hope this helps!

A similar problem occurred: my Mac would not sleep at all when I pressed ESC on lock. The solution to this problem from what I went through is to restart your computer

Put your Mac to sleep

To put your Mac to sleep, do any of the following:

• Choose Apple menu  > Sleep.
• On a Mac laptop, close the display.
• If you have the option on your keyboard, press Option-Command-Media Eject key .
• Tip: If your Mac has a Touch Bar, you can add the Sleep button to the Control Strip. Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Keyboard  in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) Click Touch Bar Settings on the right, click Customize Control Strip, then drag the Sleep button onto the Touch Bar.

wok1909 wrote:

Yes, and it should go to sleep mode when I press ESC in login or logged out screen as I know.

Mine does not go to sleep mode when I press ESC.

wok1909 wrote:

Hi, I want to ask a question that I have encountered for a long time.

I often screen lock my mac using Ctrl + Command + Q and press ESC to enter sleep mode to turn off my screen.

Interesting

Using the exact same Ctrl + Command + Q brings this computer to the Login Screen

Where upon I must manually input the Account Password

You guys really don't want to let the macbooks go to sleep, huh? First I can't prevent my mac from waking up with mouse movements, now I can't quickly put it back to sleep with the escape key in the lock screen, what's next, remove the sleep state altogether?

(we had this feature in MacOS 12 at least, updated t o 14 and now we can't put it to sleep pressing escape)

This doesn't answer the question, it's just a copy & paste from the Apple Support page.

The question is - have Apple removed the ability to immediately sleep from the lockscreen with the escape key?

Just noticed this - it appears to have changed with the last OS update.

+1

Please let me know if you find any workaround. It started happening after the latest update. Hopefully Apple will fix this issue soon.