Sleep Wake Failure: Reboots only after upgrading to High Sierra

I have spent the last month dealing with the sleep wake failure ordeal.


When High Sierra was released I took the upgrade like I always do. When my iMac goes to sleep I will be in the other room and can hear my system rebooting. The startup sound plays twice. Then the apple logo appears on the screen with and progress bar (as if something were installing) Once High Sierra starts it displays a message "Your computer was restarted because of a problem. "Sleep Wake Failure"


I have contacted Apple support on several occasions with no luck.

I have unplugged the cord - removed it from the computer for 15 seconds to reset the smc

I have reset the NVRAM

I have backed up my system using time machine and used disk utility on internet recovery to erase my iMac

I have done a fresh install of Mac OS (High Sierra) with Time Machine backup and a separate time without a backup

I have started in safe mode

Mac OS High Sierra 11.0.3

Even after doing all these tasks my iMac still reboots when in sleep mode.


I have had my iMac for several years and this has never happened before. Now it cant stop happening.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

iMac, iOS 11.0.3

Posted on Oct 27, 2017 9:43 AM

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Posted on Nov 16, 2017 2:58 PM

Is yours with the stock SSD?


After discussions with OWC and others, it does seem like Apple has seriously mis-calculated their power management capabilities.


We resolved the issue by opening up terminal and running:


sudo pmset standby 0


This disables standby which, in most cases, kicks in at about 3 hours into sleep. This will cut a lot more power to more of the system. And this is why it has issues coming back alive after a long (+3h) sleep. You actually might still have long-boot issues when rebooting or cold booting, but at least you can not have these ridiculous wake issues.


You should be good ... Try it and see.


Apple has yet to acknowledge any of the issues anyone has with their 2012-2015 MacBook and MacBook Pros. I know multiple people that Apple has charged for replacement SSD when it is obviously an engineering flaw.

198 replies

Jan 23, 2018 4:42 AM in response to Hlohner

Sorry to say High Sierra 10.13.2 did not solve sleep reboot issues on my iMac. Would really love to have High Sierra working correctly on my machine. Apple MUST be aware of this issue, I just cannot understand why they don't fix it. I must say its the only Apple update I have ever had problems with. Are Apple just too big for there boots these days and don't care about their loyal customers. I have a iPhone 6 that even with a new battery needs recharging twice a day. An iPad 2 that runs slow as a two legged dog because I cannot put the original software on to restore its speed. Come on Apple I know you want to sell more devices but they are all expensive to buy so just HELP us a little more.

Jan 25, 2018 3:36 AM in response to MichaelCrandell

In case anyone is wondering, yesterday's 10.13.3 update has not fixed the issue either. Have rebooted twice since and sent apple 2 error reports. Maybe Apples spam filter is inadvertently blocking all of these error reports. Just a thought 🙂


Perhaps if we sent the error reports to Microsoft or Google instead, they might be able to lend Apple a hand. Frustrating!!!

Feb 11, 2018 5:24 AM in response to McBeave

Just sent my latest report to apple after yet another unexpected sleep wake failure restart. I lost count. This message is only to keep the community updated about the lack of progress on the situation. Yesterday I responded to someone's comment about apple's inconsiderate approach to this problem. Apple removed my message!

Feb 12, 2018 3:46 AM in response to McBeave

After yesterday's unwanted reboot (umptieth in a row over the past few weeks) I report new and worrying state, which denied control over two of the three open applications. I had to force shut down the computer.


As some fellow sufferers of the Sleep Wake Failure epidemic in High Sierra, I can only update on related events with my iMac, in the hope that this and possibly other threads will reach critical mass for apple to do something about it.


Also I did agree with comments suggesting possible ways of soliciting apple's action towards resolving this obviously significant problem, but my response was removed by apple. Hopefully, this one survives.


In the meantime, could someone, please help with an explanation why the 'AC power' list in the 'System Power Settings' of System Information shows the following entries:


System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 15

Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 0

Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 5


presumably timers that can be set, while in the 'Energy Saver' section of System Preferences there are only two controls:


Computer sleep

Display sleep


which do not even match those above.


Thank you in advance for any response.

Feb 13, 2018 12:55 AM in response to McBeave

У меня точно такая же проблема( никакие виды переустановки не помогли.. Я даже полностью переустановил систему, форматировал и установил как новый, все осталось как было, это все началось после обновления на high sierra, до этого никаких проблем не было! В apple ни какая консультация не помогла! Осталось попробовать установить более раннюю macos,..Очень странно(, в работе mac абсолютно никаких проблем нет!

Может кто-то решил эту проблему..?

Feb 13, 2018 2:01 AM in response to vladimir2270

translation of vladimir2270 (not ideal - mostly the gist of it):


I have exactly the same problem (no resettings? helped). I even completely reset the system, formatted and set as new, everything remained as it was, it all started after an upgrade to high sierra, until then there had been no problems! No consultation with apple helped! Remained to try reverse to an earlier macOS, ... Very strange, at work mac has no problems at all! Perhaps someone solved this problem?

Feb 19, 2018 10:35 AM in response to ghogoh

No I’m afraid this certainly is not the solution to the sleep/reboot issue. Wasted another 4 hours of my life installing High Sierra and then had to go back to Sierra. It’s very sad I’ve spent a large amount of money on Apple products iMac, iPad, Apple TV, iPhones and until recently have been happy with things, but it seems that with their change of leadership things are not the same anymore. iPhone battery problems, iPad that runs like a snail due to software updates, and now this sleep/reboot issue. Please Apple look after the people that pay your wages and don’t ignore problems that won’t go away. 🙁

Feb 25, 2018 11:43 PM in response to sry2000

Yes I can also confirm

I have a late 2012 27" iMac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 66M 512 MB graphics and I have over the years installed every update available, including Beta software. It is only with High Sierra that I have experienced any sleep/reboot issue, to be honest I've never experienced any issue at all until High Sierra.

I must have tried at least 6 times to install High Sierra with suggestions on this forum but nothing has worked. I'm very disappointed that Apple won't even admit there is a problem, even if they don't know how to fix it at the present time we wouldn't be waisting lots of time trying to fix it ourselves, after all they are the experts! I suppose the only consolation is that Apple don't charge for the new operating system unlike Windows so we are not obliged to update.

Feb 26, 2018 2:32 AM in response to Latonya Frank

This is a very elaborate hypothesis and I wish it could be correct, as the scourge of Sleep Wake Failure (SWF) is taking its toll on my time and work and I can see I am not alone by far. One unfortunate weakness of the hypothesis seems to be that it represents a single case with El Capitan (as far as I am ware), against the overwhelming majority of experiences, all describing the problem appearing after the High Sierra (HS) update. Without disrespecting the issue you have and the probability (however small) your hypothesis might be correct, it seems to me that it is more likely to be an exception.


There is another discussion thread on this site, perhaps some here are already following it, where another interesting hypothesis was put forward by tingdong from 24th Feb.


Sleep Wake Failure with High Sierra 10.13.2


If anything this could be (to some extend) tested by reducing the amount of load before leaving the computer to eventually go into sleep mode.


Good luck

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Sleep Wake Failure: Reboots only after upgrading to High Sierra

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