MacOS – Retina Macbook Pro doesn’t hibernate

hibernatemacbook promacossleep-wake

I have bought a 13 Retina Macbook Pro -my first Mac, just a couple of days ago and I found something odd.

Apple claims that after an hour or so of sleep, the Mac should go to deep sleep -AKA hibernation. Well, yesterday night I closed the lid and the Mac entered sleep mode. The expected behaviour according to Apple is that when I wake up in the morning, the Mac would turn on and load the RAM image from disk back to the main memory, taking many seconds to wake up. Instead, it woke up immediately -like if it never entered hibernation.

1) Why doesn't my MBP do what Apple claim it should do when "sleeping"?

2) I'd like to have the hibernation mode active. I love that my computer turns on sooo quickly but if I'm not going to use it for many hours, I'd prefer to save battery with a (slightly slower) boot.

I already tried to change the standbydelay and the autopoweroffdelay to little numbers like 1 minute, 2 minutes, 0 minutes, 120 seconds, 60 seconds (standbydelay uses seconds, autopoweroffdelay minutes according to pmset man).

I don't have any USB connected, I turned off iCloud and Google sync.

I saw the pmset -g assertions to see if there's some daemon or app or service preventing the deep sleep. I changed the hibernatemode from 3 to 25, and back to 3.

And yes, I read the pmset man and tried virtually everything I read on the web.

The Mac keeps entering sleep but never deep sleep/hibernation.

I tested everything. I'd like to have more control (or SOME control) over when and how MY computer goes to sleep/hibernate.

Best Answer

Since you did not post your pmset -g power profile, we can't be sure if it is set right.

First, autopoweroff specifically says it does not work if on battery power. Sure, that's dumb and contrary to common sense, but that's European power laws.

The correct setting is standby:

From 10.10.5's man page:

STANDBY ARGUMENTS
standby causes kernel power management to automatically hibernate a machine after it has slept for a specified time period. This saves power while asleep. This setting defaults to ON for supported hardware. The setting standby will be visible in pmset -g if the feature is supported on this machine.

standby only works if hibernation is turned on to hibernatemode 3 or 25.

standbydelay specifies the delay, in seconds, before writing the hibernation image to disk and powering off memory for Standby.

On my Macbook Pro, for some reason, it's:

Active Profiles:
Battery Power       -1*
AC Power        -1
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         4200
 standby              0
 halfdim              1
 sms                  1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 disksleep            10
 sleep                10
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         3
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

Notice Standby is set to 0. It should be changed to 1 to turn the feature on.

pmset -a standby 1

Related Solutions

IMac – Should the iMac hibernate automatically

Your iMac should automatically spin down its disks and go to sleep.

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

pmset -g log

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.

Do you have an active ssh session or terminal session running? This can also be responsible for keeping your iMac awake.

Be aware that Apple does not officially support hibernation on desktop Macs. Your setting hibernatemode suggests you have this feature enabled.

Disclaimer: I am involved with a commercial product called Power Manager, it can help make your Mac sleep more predictably.

MacOS – Do I need Hibernate option ON for the Retina Macbook Pro

No - almost no one is so starved for battery power that full on Hibernation mode makes sense for them. So for any Mac with a battery - keep with mode 3 and avoid modes 0 and 25.

I never change Apple's default settings unless I have a reason that I can write down in a sentence as to why I want it changed. In this case, there's no real benefit to me for the alternate modes (and certainly not for any further unsupported combination that the full man page and pmset allows)

Here is the manual page for pmset which has very excellent help and documentation on hibernate mode (I wish all man pages were this awesome):

 We do not recommend modifying hibernation settings. Any changes you make
 are not supported. If you choose to do so anyway, we recommend using one
 of these three settings. For your sake and mine, please don't use any-
 thing other 0, 3, or 25.

 hibernatemode = 0 (binary 0000) by default on supported desktops. The
 system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must
 wake from the contents of memory; the system will lose context on power
 loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep.

 hibernatemode = 3 (binary 0011) by default on supported portables. The
 system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and
 will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless
 a power loss forces it to restore from disk image.

 hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The
 system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and
 will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If
 you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery
 life, you should use this setting.

So, as you can see - Mode 0 (binary 0000) is not really helpful for a retina MBP and doesn't save any battery. Mode 3 (binary 0011) is the default and what I recommend. If you didn't mind a slower sleep and higher amount of data written to the drive each time you enter sleep (as opposed to the write happening once sleep has drained the power to a low warning level around 5% reserve) you might try using Mode 25 to see if your slower sleep/wake is worth the extra battery life preservation since the Mac won't sleep but instead hibernates all the time with power off when the normal sleep time comes.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IMac – Should the iMac hibernate automatically

MacOS – Do I need Hibernate option ON for the Retina Macbook Pro

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