MacBook doesn't sleep when closing lid with external monitor attached with Lion

I also have the same problem, and i didn't have to connect my 15" macbook pro to an external monitor, I just noticed that when you close the lid the light indicator isn't blinking, hopefully apple listens to us and give us an option on how our computer will behave when we close the lid.

Same problem here. this isn't difficult, either apple needs to give us the option, or another programmer should take the initiative to come up with a settings pane to change the behavior.

I guess this is the intended behaviour in Lion, as if you google it half the posts are people askng how to do make this happen in previous versons of OSX, however I agree with the previous post - this really needs to be an option.

add me to the list too. 15" Core 2 Duo MBP with DVI external monitor. have to manually put the Mac to sleep instead of just closing lid.

I have a problem with this too. When my MacBook Pro is pluged into a power source and the lid is closed it doesn't go to sleep and since the fan is constantly running due to mail being such a cpu hog it can't be good for it. If the powersource is unplugged it will go to sleep. I hope Apple will fix this soon!

Sorry I got no answer. I have the exact same problem with my MacBook Pro 13" and Vizio HDTV. It won't sleep like it used to on Snow Leopard. Please fix Apple.

Try "sleepless" http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/10564/sleepless

That would accomplish nothing... We want it to go to sleep, but it won't with the external display attached.

Perhaps this is a new feature, one of the iApps.

iPhoto, iLife, iWork, iNsomnia, iRritation...

Agreed, this is unintuative and even damaging to the hardware – shutting the lid blocks the airflow. I just came back from work to find my macbook had been on the whole day. Unhappy.

The quick poormans solution is remembering to manually sleep by pressing:

Command+Option+Eject

Same issue...very very annoying. The behavior on Snow Leopard worked so well...don't know why they'd mess with it.

This is drving me nuts as well! Now when I have the laptop plugged in to the second monitor, I have to go through extra steps to put it to sleep. Irritating!!

Give us an option so that we can make the decision. Please!

seems pretty clear this should be a configurable option, either in Display or Energy Saver preferences.

I can definitely see the use-case where someone uses an external monitor or a projector or something, where they want it to stay on when the lid is closed. But there should still be a way somehow to force it to go to sleep when you close the lid with an external monitor

Yes this needs to be an option because it's taken the option of just using the external screen, which you instigate by sleeping the laptop, closing lid hit space bar or mouse and just the external screen comes on then you can open the lid to keep the air flow going and also not have an extended desktop where the mouse keeps disappearing to... Fix. Now Please.

Just read this post and it worked for me. Fix Lion can't sleep problem