MacOS – Only hibernate when closing the lid, display sleep otherwise

hibernatemacbook promacospower-management

I am looking for a way to hibernate (i.e. RAM saved to HDD then turned off) only when closing the lid. When the lid is opened, I expect OSX to simply turn off the screen after X minutes (i.e. everything keeps running). Mostly what a Windows PC does out of the box.

pmset does not seem to make possible controlling what happens when closing the lid.

Best Answer

Hibernate only (not sleep) when closing the lid:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

And to go back to "normal" behavior:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

As for the sleep behavior with an open lid, just slide the Computer sleep timer to Neverin System Preferences > Energy Saver. Alternatively do

sudo pmset -a sleep 0

Related Solutions

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.

Delay after opening lid display dark until key pressed

Check that pmset -g hibernatemode command in Terminal gives you 3 or 0 and not any other value. If it gives you something else, execute pmset hibernatemode 3 (this is the correct default).

Sometimes these settings go wrong for unknown reason.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MacBook Pro – Fix for Not Sleeping When Lid is Closed

Delay after opening lid display dark until key pressed

Related Question