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

I would like to offer this solution. I have a MacBook Pro with an external monitor, and, for a year and a half both displays slept when I closed the MBPS. This behavior stopped when I installed Lion. They would sleep when I removed the power cord, but what a pain that would be. The command "pmset -g assertions" gave no indication of which process ought be preventing sleep.

I contacted Apple support, and after some searching, the guy working with me found this thread, which was flagged as an Apple-approved solution:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190417?start=165&tstart=0

This is the important part:

Correct AnswerRe: How do I tell Lion to disable the LCD screen even when the lid is open?

Aug 31, 2011 9:56 AM (in response to Bob_viking)

Here's the command to make your laptop behave like it did Pre-Lion (courtesy of my friend):

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

Works perfectly for me. If it screws up your system, just zap the PRAM next boot (cmd-opt-p-r) and you'll be back to the default Lion state. Or if you can still get into terminal, this command will get you back to Lion's default state as well:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

Enjoy!

One snag was that I had to run it with the external monitor disabled, but it worked great!

Hi guys, the same problem here. I talked to tech support and here is one recommendation from them - report this bug as a feedback here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/ ... if there will be more reports, hope they put it as any "option" in Preferences. But they told we need to report this in feedback form. I reported it as a Mac OSX bug, so here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

If your Mac does not go to sleep at all (independend of an external monitor) you have a complete different issue, which is discussed in several other discussions, like: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1070629?start=0&tstart=0

Apple advice to this is here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1776?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

But it seems there is no help, if the sleeping issue only occurs when the external monitor is connected.

I found out, that it will work, if either the external monitor or the power supply is disconnected for the moment when closing the lid.

jk10003 wrote:

I would like to offer this solution. I have a MacBook Pro with an external monitor, and, for a year and a half both displays slept when I closed the MBPS. This behavior stopped when I installed Lion. They would sleep when I removed the power cord, but what a pain that would be. The command "pmset -g assertions" gave no indication of which process ought be preventing sleep.

I contacted Apple support, and after some searching, the guy working with me found this thread, which was flagged as an Apple-approved solution:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3190417?start=165&tstart=0

This is the important part:

Correct AnswerRe: How do I tell Lion to disable the LCD screen even when the lid is open?

Aug 31, 2011 9:56 AM (in response to Bob_viking)

Here's the command to make your laptop behave like it did Pre-Lion (courtesy of my friend):

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

Works perfectly for me. If it screws up your system, just zap the PRAM next boot (cmd-opt-p-r) and you'll be back to the default Lion state. Or if you can still get into terminal, this command will get you back to Lion's default state as well:

sudo nvram -d boot-args

Enjoy!

One snag was that I had to run it with the external monitor disabled, but it worked great!

I'm a so-called 'late adopter', only having upgraded to Lion from Snow Leopard this month. Your solution nicely solved the problem for me. A real shout out to you. Thanks!

I have this problem too. Apple's support article on multiple displays (link) describes this behaviour as "closed lid mode", which is only supposed to be invoked if you have an external keyboard and mouse connected. I don't have a keyboard or mouse connected to something isn't right.

There's a dedicated support page for closed lid mode: link

I hope terminal commands aren't the only way of resolving this problem.

apple goes from one extreme to another......

On SL i was always ****** when i connected my tv and couldn't close the lid to watch a movie without the notebook going into sleep. Now it does exactly the opposite without giving the choice to change that behavior.

Apple, let us make our own decisions and give us some choices...

Same problem here, on a 13" MacBook Pro 2011. I have an external monitor hooked up, and when I close the lid, the laptop does not go to sleep. There should be a setting that allows users to select what happens when the laptop lid is closed.

I have the same problem too: MBP wont sleep unless i manually select it, but i just unplugged my external monitor and now it works like its supposed to.

i check console, and it was complaining said:

kCGErrorIllegalArgument: CGSGetDisplayBounds: Invalid display 0x04272d80

_NXGetScreenRect: error getting display bounds (1001)

this was repeated 4 times, followed by:

EDID does not contain Extended EDID, not valid for audio

which i can only assume is becaus it is pluged in using a DVI adapter (i.e. no audio, therfore not really an error)

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.

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.

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!

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

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.