MacBook – Waking closed lid macbooks using wireless

macbook prowake-on-lan

We have carts of MacBooks and MacBook Pros that students use and close the lid and put them back in cart when they are done. They use wireless networking and don't have USB or displays connected. I am wondering if there is any way we can wake the MacBook remotely using wireless (WoWLAN?). We don't want to have the setting where MacBook doesn't sleep when lid is closed. Is there any way we can wake them on and have them connect to our wireless when their lid is closed? The remote management software we use couldn't work when they are in the cart overnight.

Best Answer

Apple now says yes: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204032

If your Mac supports Power Nap, these activities can occur while your Mac is asleep:
[...]
Mobile Device Management can remotely lock and wipe your Mac.

And these activities can occur while your Mac is asleep and plugged in to an AC power outlet:
Software updates download.
Mac App Store items (including software updates), download in the background.
Time Machine performs backups.
Spotlight performs indexing.
Help Center content updates.
Wireless base stations can wake your Mac using Wake on Wireless.

Assuming Power Nap is on AND the laptop cart is a powered one AND is actually plugged into the wall (yes, that one's from experience), you should be able to reach them remotely. Apple Remote Desktop does with 10.11 and 10.12.

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MacBook – Always sync 2 macbooks

The Air will make a great machine to throw in a bag and just get out of the house for a bit.

Depending on how much you need to keep in sync the way I prefer is to use Dropbox with symlinks to the relevant areas, lets me keep stuff like my Coda sites in check across my machines.

MacBook Pro – Fix for Not Sleeping When Lid is Closed

A lack of wake reason entries suggests your Mac is never fully sleeping. The sleep mechanism has started but never completes.

Use the following Terminal command to view a detailed log showing your Mac's power history:

pmset -g log

You will see a list of entries in form:

 * Domain: applicationresponse.slowresponse
 - Message: PMConnection AirPort configd plug-in com.apple.powermanagement.applicationresponse.slowresponse 1399 ms
 - Time: 13/03/2012 12:27:53 CET 
 - Signature: AirPort configd plug-in
 - UUID: AB482838-2D6E-0000-0000-14BF53E20000
 - Result: Noop
 - Response time (ms): 1399

Look out for applications that may be keeping your Mac awake and active. Applications and other processes can keep your Mac awake if they are providing a service, such as file sharing or remote access. However, processes should be forced asleep after 30 seconds on lid close.

The behaviour you are seeing suggests a kernel extension or IOKit problem. User level processes can not block sleep when instigated by the user.

Do you have any utilities installed that install kernel extensions (kext)? These might include screen recording or audio capture tools; utilities than need low level access to your Mac.

Best Answer

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