If you’re like me, you’re probably sick of your MacBook going to sleep every time you step away from it for a few minutes. Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s a way to keep Mac from sleeping. The bad news is that it involves disabling a system setting that is designed to save power.
So, if you’re willing to trade a little battery life for the ability to keep your MacBook awake, read on!
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What is Sleep mode on Mac
On a MacBook, Sleep mode is standby mode. It conserves power while still keeping your content accessible. When you’re not using your MacBook, it automatically goes to sleep after a set period of time. If you have projects or presentations that need to be accessible for long periods of time, you can adjust your Energy Saver preferences or schedule sleep times.
How to keep Mac from sleeping
There are a few different ways that you can keep your MacBook from going to sleep. One way is to change the system preferences. To do this, go to the “Energy Saver” panel in System Preferences and uncheck the box next to “Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for”. You can also set a time limit for inactivity before the computer goes to sleep.
Another way to keep your MacBook from sleeping is to use a utility like Caffeine. Caffeine is a free utility that prevents your computer from going to sleep. It sits in the menu bar and you can activate it with a click. It will stay active until you deactivate it or quit the program.
If you want to prevent your MacBook from sleeping while it’s connected to power, you can go into the “Power Adapter” panel in System Preferences and check the “Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off” box.
How to schedule sleep mode on your Mac
If you want your Mac to sleep after a certain amount of time has passed, you can schedule sleep mode. Sleep mode is different from shutting down your Mac, which turns it off completely. When your Mac is in sleep mode, it uses very little power and can save your battery.
To turn on scheduled sleep mode:
- Open Energy Saver preferences, then click Schedule.
- Select “Start up or wake,” then enter the time you want your computer to start up or wake.
- Click the “Sleep” pop-up menu, then enter the amount of time you want your computer to be in sleep mode before it goes to sleep.
- If you want your computer to go to sleep when the display is turned off, select “Put the display to sleep.”
- When you’re finished, click Save.
How to temporarily turn off sleep mode on your Mac using Terminal
If you want to keep your Mac from going to sleep, there are a few ways you can do it. The most straightforward way is to use Terminal.
To do this, open Terminal and type in the following command:
defaults write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 300
This will keep your Mac from going to sleep for 5 minutes (300 seconds). You can change the number to anything you want, up to 86400, which is 24 hours.
If you want to turn off sleep mode altogether, you can use the following command:
caffeinate -t 86400 &
This will keep your Mac awake for 24 hours. To turn off sleep mode, just hit Control-C in Terminal.
How to turn off sleep mode on your Mac
If you want to keep your Mac from going to sleep, there are a few different ways you can do this. The first is to simply turn off the energy saver setting in your System Preferences.
- Open System Preferences
- Click Energy Saver
- Uncheck “Enable Power nap” and “Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for”
You can also keep your Mac from going to sleep by using a little known Terminal command.
Open Terminal (located in Applications -> Utilities)
Type the following command: caffeinate -i -t 36000
This will keep your Mac awake for 10 hours. If you want, you can change the time by changing the number at the end of the command (the “-t 36000” part). For example, if you wanted your Mac to stay awake for 24 hours, you would type “-t 86400”.
How to keep your mac from sleeping when you close the lid
Assuming you want to keep your mac from going to sleep when you close the lid (without using a screensaver), you can do the following:
- Go to System Preferences and click on Energy Saver.
- Click on the settings for Power Adapter on the right side and uncheck “Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for”
- close lid and it should stay on.
How to keep your mac from sleeping when inactive
By default, your Mac will go to sleep after a period of inactivity. This can be annoying if you’re working on something and don’t want your Mac to go to sleep.
Here’s how to keep your Mac from sleeping when inactive:
- Open System Preferences and click on Energy Saver.
- Make sure that the Computer Sleep slider is set to Never.
- If you want, you can also disable Display Sleep by setting the slider to Never.
- Optionally, you can uncheck the box next to Put hard disks to sleep when possible if you want your hard drive to remain active all the time.
How to keep your mac from sleeping when plugged in
There are times when you want your MacBook to stay awake even when it’s plugged in. For example, if you’re installing software updates or downloading large files, you may not want your MacBook to go to sleep and interrupt the process.
Here’s how to keep your MacBook awake when it’s plugged in:
- Open System Preferences and click on Energy Saver.
- Click the Power Adapter tab.
- Under the heading “Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off,” select the checkbox next to “Plugged in.”
- Close System Preferences and your MacBook will now stay awake when plugged in!
