Another trick is to open Activity Monitor, switch to the Energy tab, and sort by the "Preventing sleep" column. Some apps prevent macOS from sleeping.
In my case, I've discovered that Devonthink (document/notes management app) is responsible. I've been meaning to file a bug report about it.
I'm surprised that Apple's power management doesn't have an alert for this. Surely an app that causes my Mac to become glowing hot while sitting in my backpack, not to mention slowly running out of battery, is a pretty important thing to intercept. Meanwhile, I keep being asked if Chrome should be allowed to find devices on my network, which doesn't seem nearly as important.
nucleardog · 7m ago
> I'm surprised that Apple's power management doesn't have an alert for this.
I'm more surprised that any application can prevent sleep _when you close the lid_.
I can understand the utility behind something like stopping sleep via timeout so a media player can tell the system "hey, they're watching a movie don't turn off even if they don't touch you for a bit".
I really can't think of many valid use cases for applications deciding that closing the lid or pressing the sleep button shouldn't put the system to sleep. Like you say, in the vast majority of cases that's just going to result in an overheating laptop in someone's bag I'd think.
Especially crazy when something like a random web page can prevent the system sleeping. Laptop won't turn off... which of my 70 tabs is it?!
Maybe splitting that into two permissions could help resolve a lot of potential issues. Sure, let lots of things disable the sleep via timeout... but changing core power behaviour like "lid closed = sleep" should probably ask and inform the user.
ryandrake · 2h ago
I didn't realize any rando app could prevent the entire system from sleeping. Shouldn't this power be gated behind a user-controllable permission? I assume the developer needs to at least use an entitlement to call whatever API does this...?
bayindirh · 2h ago
Any website and app can do it. Zoom / Google Meet / YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify already does this. I don't think it needs to be hidden behind walls. Maybe a user override can be added.
In Linux, KDE's power manager PowerDevil shows if something is blocking device or display sleep for example. I don't think it's hard to add an indicator in macOS, too.
ryandrake · 2h ago
Visibility isn't the problem. As OP mentioned, you can go into Activity Monitor to easily see what application is doing this. The user just doesn't seem to have any control over it or any way to stop a particular application from doing it.
amluto · 12m ago
I find something, presumably a Safari tab, blocking sleep regularly and not actually showing up in activity monitor.
Why is this not an opt-in thing? Heck, why can’t I turn it off? I can could the number of tabs that I want to allow to function when “sleeping” on zero fingers.
bayindirh · 2h ago
It's buried too deep. Clicking on battery and seeing a line saying "There are apps preventing sleep >" and hovering on it to see a list is way better than digging activity monitor.
Another option might be another section for apps preventing sleep, like power hungry applications.
foobarian · 1h ago
Or, when apps try to intercept sleep the OS can pop an Allow/Don't allow dialog before the app can actually achieve this
bayindirh · 1h ago
That'd create a lot of interruptions for the user. Some apps use it temporarily in critical sections, web media players enable/disable when play/pause events happen, etc.
An indicator and selective overrides is the way, IMHO. Invisible if you don't look, but it's there when you need it.
fsckboy · 49m ago
>Invisible if you don't look, but it's there when you need it.
so, like a white picket fence vs an invisible fence™ for your dog: white picket fence (not to mention two kids) is so unsightly people would never use it as a metaphor for bliss, why not just give the dog his unexpected-can't-see-it-coming-shock collar? let him discover through repeated trial and error what he's allowed and what he is not.
sounds about right, you've help me articulate what I don't like about modern so-called design
bayindirh · 12m ago
Actually, the example in my mind was a bit different: "Elegantly invisible", I call it. Let me give a couple of examples.
In Europe, in some cities you see huge planters with blooming flowers. They are well looked after and a bliss to be around them. Look from above, they are strategically placed bollards. Even a tank can't pass through them. Smaller installations are made around banks for example. These "small", ordinary looking planters weigh a couple of tons, plus they're firmly planted to the ground. They are essentially fortified walls, but they don't distract you, and enhance the environment in a way, too.
In Amsterdam Central Station, there is a big locker room, which is invisible if you don't know, but very evident when you follow the signs.
My proposition was similar. A section under battery status menu: No Apps Preventing Sleep. Simple. Invisible, unobtrusive, but bright as day when you know where to look.
I don't like the design you gave examples for. I don't like things which I can't find, and only see if the app seems to be in the mood for it. My proposition is a bit more nuanced. You know where it is, you know where to look, but it's not an eye sore or a distraction.
triknomeister · 2h ago
In KDE, user can also override this.
bayindirh · 2h ago
Yes, you can. I forgot to add that, thanks.
odux · 2h ago
Until recently a rando app could prevent a Mac from shutting down or logging out. I think it was changed in Sonoma.
arijun · 33m ago
I would rather have both, and I imagine the chrome one is easier to implement: either it asks for permissions or it doesn’t. Since there are valid reasons to keep the machine awake after closing the lid (close out connections, save files to disk, etc), it’s maybe harder to tell when one is going too long.
arijun · 28m ago
Actually, thinking about it, it wouldn’t be that hard to implement for both that and background processes that eat up cpu.
sangeeth96 · 3h ago
> In my case, the “Wake for maintenance” option was disabled, and Sleep Aid helpfully showed in the settings interface that this could lead to frequent wake up events.
Did author mean to write "option was enabled" instead?
sulam · 3h ago
I had the same thought, and while this is a complete guess, it passes my sniff test personally. It’s possible that when this setting is not enabled, those wake events are not coalesced into hourly wakeups, but instead happen arbitrarily throughout the night. That would immediately lead to the behavior described.
mikepurvis · 18m ago
Yeah, sounds like it's really poorly labeled, and should instead be more like "Consolidate required maintenance tasks into hourly wake sessions"
That would make it much clearer that enabling it = fewer wakes.
chicagobob · 2h ago
Exactly what the author meant to say.
bpicolo · 3h ago
I'm confused too. Does enabling a setting that explicitly wakes up the computer cause fewer wakeups?
ncr100 · 1h ago
Counter-intuitive statements deserve either expansion or, at the least, identification as such.
Editing after composing is tricky, to catch such issues.
conductr · 2h ago
I'm confused too, author's screenshot shows it as Enabled leading me to believe that is the "fixed" state but not intuitive as to why disabled would lead to more wakes
valbaca · 2h ago
I’m also just as confused
pauljara · 3h ago
This used to happen to my MacBook Pro, although it was a non Apple Silicon one. The issue was that I had changed the DHCP lease time on my router from the default to a really low value. I believe I had set it to 15 minutes. What I believe was happening was the MBP was waking up to renew its IP address every 15 minutes and by the time it went to sleep again, it was probably waking back up to repeat the process. Changing the value on the router back to its default completely fixed the battery drain issue on my MacBook Pro. I'd never have guessed the cause-effect except I made the change around the same time I purchased that new MacBook Pro and was paying more attention to any issues that might arise.
p_ing · 3h ago
A functional DHCP client will request renewal of it's IP address 50% of the way through the lease, so it was probably worse than you thought.
spearman · 1h ago
Woah just found out my router (mikrotik) defaults to 10 minute lease durations.
ThePowerOfFuet · 2h ago
> I had changed the DHCP lease time on my router from the default to a really low value. I believe I had set it to 15 minutes.
What were you hoping to achieve by doing that?
pauljara · 39m ago
I was trying to determine if a lease expired, if my router would immediately try to lease that same IP out to another machine on the network. It felt like it cached an expired lease mapping and would try to keep that old IP un-leased in case the original machine to which it was mapped came back online. I was just trying to better understand the behaviour.
mlyle · 2h ago
I like low lease times. DHCP server knows what's really on the network, and if something requests lots and lots of the pool you'll be fine in 15-30 minutes.
If things are set to a really long time, >=12 hours, you find out the next day when everything is broken (or you get alerts in the middle of the night). If you set them to a randomized 15-90m span, you get things breaking immediately when you screw up the dhcp server.
cruffle_duffle · 2h ago
Hah. Your answer just has more questions. What on earth is requesting so many DHCP leases?
mlyle · 2h ago
You've never accidentally spun something up that consumes all the leases?
It's just been a couple of times, but I've definitely done it (e.g. bridged a couple of networks that shouldn't have been).
But mostly, it's the other two things: it provides me with a list of hosts active now, and if the DHCP server is subtly broken I get a sentinel signal of something being wrong earlier (and it tends to be a partial instead of complete failure).
One more bonus: if I move something to a static lease, out of the pool, it'll renumber in a reasonable time and I don't need to go kick link state to get it to request again.
Things like really big caches and really long lease times: They're good for average performance, and they can let you ride out small problems. The flip side is that they tend to mask problems and to create really big demand transients at times. The trick is always to find a good middle ground.
ncr100 · 1h ago
Excellent answer - new appreciation for low lease times, thank you
cruffle_duffle · 2h ago
That is so weird. How much mAh can a single “wake and renew lease” possibly take? Like it has to be milliamp-milliseconds (mAmS?). I mean my phone is chattering with the cell network probably all the time even in a fairly deep sleep mode. The laptop is lighting up the WiFi stack to send and receive (and process) like a few packets?
Like you said though, it’s pre Apple silicon so who really knows! Maybe it decided to do some other stuff while it was awake?
bayindirh · 1h ago
Your cell phone modem is completely decoupled from the main processor and is a complete, independent system in itself, so it's optimized to do that.
Bluetooth and WiFi radios on Macs are also semi-independent. They can keep connections alive while the system is in deep sleep.
Waking a big processor, frequency scaling it and turning it off is surprisingly complicated. We disabled SpeedStep in our clusters since frequency scaling visibly affected performance of the systems due to overhead incurred by frequency change. Same is true for waking / sleeping big silicon.
It's complicated, it's wasteful.
Some of the Intel's biggest improvements as their micro-architecture evolved were reduction of the frequency scaling overhead and its performance impact, but this never made the news back in the day because its effect was invisible in consumer class systems even in its most primitive form.
> Maybe it decided to do some other stuff while it was awake?
That's called Power Nap and is enabled only if your computer is connected to power, by default.
p_ing · 2h ago
It may stay on longer than the amount of time it takes to renew. Perhaps for every wake it stays on for 60 seconds; it is also doing other things like checking mail.
cruffle_duffle · 2h ago
I wonder if some user-space process lights up and throws a wrench in things.
I’m sure both Microsoft and Apple have entire teams with incredibly full backlogs dealing with power management. And I’m sure half their time is spent dealing with “messes” caused by other teams doing wild and crazy (but somehow theoretically useful) shit.
It’s clearly not an easy problem.
sneak · 3h ago
This is a macOS bug; it doesn’t need an IP address while it’s asleep. Waking up to renew a DHCP lease is crazy.
Closed source OSes are such a bane.
DJBunnies · 3h ago
That’s a little obtuse. Macs can still poll for certain messages while they’re asleep (Power Nap.)
bayindirh · 1h ago
Macs doesn't need to wake completely to renew their DHCP leases. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios can act independently and on their own for this low level operations.
On the other hand, I don't consider my computer to wake up, take a backup, check system/app updates and my mails and handle those while I'm sleeping as a feature, not a bug.
mschuster91 · 3h ago
> This is a macOS bug; it doesn’t need an IP address while it’s asleep. Waking up to renew a DHCP lease is crazy.
It's actually not. As a user I'd expect the device to wake up and still have the same IP address via a continuation of the lease.
Yes, the correct way would be a longer lived DHCP lease, but el-cheapo ISP routers often lock down such settings.
ryandrake · 2h ago
Interesting, as a different user, I'd expect the opposite: If my computer is "asleep" I don't expect it to do anything, and it shouldn't be able to wake itself up.
kccqzy · 42m ago
The definition of waking itself up is unclear. Surely you expect clicking on your mouse or typing in the keyboard wakes it up? That means USB events or Bluetooth can wake your computer. Still it's user-triggered and doesn't count as waking itself up. And I expect that initiating an SSH connection to that computer causes it to wake up, because I initiated that SSH connection; so it doesn't count as waking itself up. I further configured my computer to back up to my NAS every day at midnight. Since I configured it myself I expect it to wake up on a timer and it still doesn't count as waking itself up.
evan_ · 2h ago
that's called "off".
theevilsharpie · 20m ago
Turning a machine off loses any existing application state, and requires both applications and the OS to be re-launched.
When I put a machine into standby, I want it to go in a standby state, and then stay there until I explicitly wake it -- not keep doing whatever background tasks the OS developers, app developers, or whatever other third parties think they need to keep doing.
scarby2 · 1h ago
i suppose we have come to expect 4 states:
- off: no power, no activity
- hibernate: no power, no activity session state saved to non-volatile storage
- sleep: Minimal power, RAM remains powered with the session state, can be resumed quickly
- on
now we essentially have sleep++ and no option to set it back to vanilla sleep.
amelius · 2h ago
This is a good point (running processes might break if the IP address suddenly changed after wake-up). However, why should the renewal process take on the order of 15 minutes? And why would it require a complete wake up?
teejmya · 2h ago
I've worked around this problem on each mac laptop I've owned over the years by configuring "hibernate on lid close."
When I open the lid of the mac it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to resume. I consider this a small price to pay in exchange for reliable sleep and less battery drain with the lid closed.
If you want to try this, run in the terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25
If you don't like it, you can restore defaults with:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
neilalexander · 2h ago
Activity Monitor has an "Energy" tab that is useful in situations like this. It can tell you when an application is preventing sleep altogether and it can also show power usage of a process over the last 12 hours, so if you investigate this straight after a "night's sleep", you can usually spot culprits pretty quickly.
dewey · 2h ago
Funnily I wrote almost the same blog post last week, sadly that solution didn't work for me as there's some other processes that are not power nap that wake up my Macs: https://annoying.technology/posts/3e451c7b/
resters · 3h ago
My iPad only lasts a few days even with zero use. I have not been able to figure out what settings to modify so that I can (for example) pick it up a month later and not find the battery dead.
jbellis · 3h ago
It's Find My. No great solution. I turn my iPad off now when not actively using it.
sotix · 1h ago
Wow you’re right. Find My has used 10% of my battery in the past day even though my iPad stays permanently at home. What’s worse is that my battery life has dropped from 100% health to 96% after a year even though I enabled the 80% charge limit. I wonder if Find My has added excessive wear on the battery.
dewey · 1h ago
Yep, same experience. It's crazy that the very much default case of "iPad and things with Air Tags" has this effect. Not exactly an edge case.
jq-r · 2h ago
Disabling bluetooth usually helps there. But completely, not from the control center.
dagmx · 3h ago
Disable push notifications and background sync. Those will always be the things that pull the most idle power.
JKCalhoun · 3h ago
Harsh suggestion: log out of iCloud on the device.
If that works you can try to isolate it further.
OldfieldFund · 1h ago
how do you work without iCloud?
Yes, I realize alternatives exist, but this works so smoothly on Apple devices.
fn-mote · 47m ago
It’s a debugging technique not a permanent solution.
If logging out of iCloud does NOT fix the problem, you eliminated a bunch of potential issues at once.
SubiculumCode · 2h ago
My new A16 iPad seems to use more power sitting closed much than I would have thought. I came here to say this, but found you got to it first. I hope someone here has some thoughts on the matter.
I am more Android guy, so I am not yet familiar with the options. Does the iPad have a power usage app describing what apps/services are using the power? Bluetooth for one to keep the Apple Pencil ready, I suppose.
This seems to be available as a first party config option
sangeeth96 · 3h ago
On macOS 26 DB running on M4 MacBook Air, I don't see power nap in that place. I see "Wake for network access" which might be the new thing and it's set to "Only on Power Adapter" by default.
sangeeth96 · 3h ago
Edit 2: My bad, I assumed power nap == "wake for network access". This no longer seems to be an option in macOS 26.
Mine's set to "Only on Power Adapter", which makes sense.
Edit: On an M4 MacBook Air running macOS 26 DB
blokey · 2h ago
It's not the macOS 26, its the option is not available on Apple Silicon machines. I think it is always enabled.
Turn Power Nap on or off for a Mac desktop computer
On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Energy in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
Turn on Enable Power Nap.
Note: This option is only available on Intel-based Mac computers.
You can see (and change) the settings via Terminal, 'pmset -g' will show the current options.
vulkoingim · 2h ago
On Apple Silicon it's not available under the battery settings, but you can still set it.
> sudo pmset -a powernap 1
-a is an option to set it for battery and plugged-in. If you want only either you can do -b for battery, -c for charger
You can also check the settings with:
> pmset -g
nagaiaida · 48m ago
you can also use pmset to programmatically enable/disable low power mode (which i do when the battery gets too hot for my liking even before thermal throttling kicks in)
paxys · 2h ago
In my case the culprit is always all the security spyware/crapware that my employer has installed on the macbook.
thimabi · 2h ago
I’ve been facing a similar issue with my MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon.
While sleeping with an SSD connected, it seems to wake up periodically and activate the drive to do something. The result? Both the laptop and the SSD eventually overheat, and the battery quickly drains.
The only way I managed to mitigate this issue is by disconnecting all drives and plugging in the MBP before setting it to sleep. It’s an annoying bug, to say the least. It reeks of insufficient quality control and testing…
Turn off WiFi when going to sleep, turn it back on on wake.
I don't need my laptop to be doing things when it's in my bag. It's not a phone, unlike what Apple seems to think...
darknavi · 2h ago
I've used an Intel MBP for a few years and now an M2 MBP for a few more. I've always had extremely stellar standby battery life. That is, until a few months ago. Now I get home and my backpack is warm from my MBP turning on while sitting in my backpack.
This is the one biggest thing I loved Apple hardware for over Windows laptops.
ectocardia · 1h ago
In case this helps anyone, I found that removing a Yubikey (i.e. with that contact sensor) seemed to reduce the number of times I opened my bag to find a Macbook Pro unexpectedly warm and with a drained battery.
magic_hamster · 38m ago
Apple's definition of "sleep" is unique, to put it mildly. My MBP may be "sleeping" but it will still aggressively connect to any wireless interface. Sometimes when passing by with my Bluetooth headphones, the MBP will often steal my current connection.
When a device goes to sleep, I don't expect it to interact with anything, even if I didn't deliberately turn off all wireless communication.
Apple is the only one doing this. I've had dozens of linux and windows devices by now, and Apple are the only ones to aggressively maintain or connect to wireless while sleeping.
vel0city · 5m ago
Apple is not the only one doing this. Windows, depending on how its configured and the hardware in it, will keep WiFi and even Bluetooth devices connected even while "asleep".
Example: I go out to the park with my Windows laptop. I turn on the computer. I pair my headphones and hop on my phone's wifi tethering. I do some stuff. I close my laptop lid, the system goes to "sleep". My headphones still think they're connected. My phone still shows the laptop is a client. I walk around the park for an hour. My headphones are still connected, my laptop is still a client on the tethering. I sit down, I open my laptop, it wakes up, and it's still connected to everything.
TuringNYC · 2h ago
I have the opposite problem -- i wish i could lock my Macbook but show my screen, with everything running and viewable (e.g., logs, dashboards) (but locked so people cannot do anything). I'm so used to this with xtrlock on Linux.
ceedan · 2h ago
I shut mine down every day. It stops battery drain and is a point of friction if I am thinking about "jumping on to work for a sec" at night. If the work is truly not important, I won't want to boot up and get situated.
gww · 3h ago
I have a different problem with my M3 Macbook Pro. If I leave chrome (sometimes other apps too) open with the macbook plugged in and the lid closed the computer will get very warm and stay very warm until I unplug it / close chrome.
Edit: It's also not warm when plugged in and using chrome with the lid open.
marifjeren · 28m ago
Funny, there used to be a tool you could use on Mac called Insomnia, whose purpose was to do exactly this, keep the computer awake at all times regardless of power settings or whether the laptop was closed.
(not to be confused with Insomnia the API testing tool which is great)
sc68cal · 2h ago
I have been experiencing this issue, I think it's related to bluetooth, which does appear to be flaky
calyhre · 2h ago
I have the same issue and it's driving me crazy. One bluetooth device is waking up a MBP M4 regularly during the night, lighting up an external screen. Even without any connected devices.
p_ing · 2h ago
Conversely, I have a joystick that prevents my Windows desktop from sleeping; thankfully it won't wake it up if I manually sleep it.
Badly behaving peripherals suck.
palla89 · 3h ago
this is a problem that affects me almost every day, I'm downloading the app hoping it will solve the problem for me too
hoppp · 3h ago
Imagine people who are not technical buying a new mac because of this...
conductr · 2h ago
Non technical people would just leave it plugged in and forget the problem existed
exitb · 2h ago
What if, hear me out, that’s kind of the goal? It’s not the only trap in the Apple ecosystem that degrades your experience over time. I’m convinced that the main purpose of Podcasts app is to eat up storage.
cruffle_duffle · 2h ago
Man, I’m not gonna start a platform war but my work laptop (some trashy HP thing) is so much worse. It could be due to the gobs of “Hyper-Endpoint Double-Kill Anti-Virus Defender Enterprise Edition” garbage they installed on it. That thing can’t even make it a full day with the lid closed before running out of battery.
Back in my day they had a physical power switch that killed the mains to the power supply. Why we even had to format our 40mb hard drive and reimagine the box once a week, both way… in the snow! And we liked it that way! Kids these days!
atonse · 13m ago
As long as we're reminiscing...
I asked my dad to buy Windows 95. But he didn't realize he bought the floppy disk edition. So I had to install windows 95 using the very slow floppy drive. It was either 13 or 26 floppies, I don't remember.
Imagine sitting there while that percentage bar moved glacially, waiting for "Insert Disk 12"
But I still remember how great it felt to get a 1 GB hard drive. "We'll never fill it up!!!"
sugarpimpdorsey · 3h ago
Apple's power management isn't as great as everyone claims.
I've an older MacBook Air with a severe battery drain problem.
The battery will last maybe a day or two when SHUT DOWN (not sleep) before being fully drained and refuses to power on.
It's done this since day one.
I tried resetting everything possible which could be reset and nothing helped.
Allegedly the problem is related to a Bluetooth radio which does not shut down properly but as usual Apple is tight-lipped, and the cult members that moderate their community forum try to gaslight you into believing the computers are perfect and you're doing something wrong.
Eventually I just gave up and lugged the power adapter everywhere.
p_ing · 2h ago
Like, "Intel older"? Those had terrible thermal management for a laptop. An "older" laptop with a dead battery or one misreporting is not uncommon and has no bearing on how modern laptops, be they from Dell, HP, or Apple, perform. You could have 500+ cycles on any laptop and see the behavior you're claiming is terrible power management.
Get a semi-new Apple laptop and then let us know how terrible the power management is.
sugarpimpdorsey · 2h ago
> Get a semi-new Apple laptop and then let us know how terrible the power management is
So your solution to Apple's terrible power management is to give them even more of my money?
As I said, it did this since it was brand new. Battery cycles have nothing to do with it. It's a macOS or hardware problem in the SMC.
kccqzy · 37m ago
You should've returned it and gotten a new one. It sounds like a hardware issue. I've used a 2018 MacBook Air as my daily driver for a while (to cut down on weight for my bike commute) and never experienced the problem you described.
JSR_FDED · 2h ago
I’m not doubting you’re having a problem, but as counterpoint I have owned and bought for others more than 20 MacBook Airs and Pros the last 10 years - all with flawless power management.
shortrounddev2 · 3h ago
I haven't used a MacBook in years but when I did, their power management was actually the worst thing about them - this was before they moved to ARM, so I assume it has improved, but it was common for a MacBook pro to turn into a screaming hot chunk of aluminum which would burn your legs on contact and misrepresent the actual battery life available to it.
tracker1 · 2h ago
My biggest issue with pre-arm macs is that on the highest end models (issued Core i9 from my job), it would thermal throttle to the point it was nearly useless when I needed it the most. It was really locked down, so I couldn't do anything to undervolt/underclock it, which would have made it run much better.
thewebguyd · 2h ago
> their power management was actually the worst thing about them - this was before they moved to ARM
I'd wager all of the improvements are from the silicon itself and not anything Apple has done with macOS.
Groxx · 2h ago
tbh it seems intentional to me, and I broadly prefer it. I would much rather have a hot device than a loud fan, at very nearly all times I use a computer. hot aluminum dissipates heat quite well, just passively cool as long as possible please.
could they have used larger fans to reduce that noise? yes, definitely, and probably should have. but it's hard to beat using the whole device as a radiator.
sugarpimpdorsey · 3h ago
The Apple Community moderators would have you believe you're using the built-in pizza stone function wrong.
In my case, I've discovered that Devonthink (document/notes management app) is responsible. I've been meaning to file a bug report about it.
I'm surprised that Apple's power management doesn't have an alert for this. Surely an app that causes my Mac to become glowing hot while sitting in my backpack, not to mention slowly running out of battery, is a pretty important thing to intercept. Meanwhile, I keep being asked if Chrome should be allowed to find devices on my network, which doesn't seem nearly as important.
I'm more surprised that any application can prevent sleep _when you close the lid_.
I can understand the utility behind something like stopping sleep via timeout so a media player can tell the system "hey, they're watching a movie don't turn off even if they don't touch you for a bit".
I really can't think of many valid use cases for applications deciding that closing the lid or pressing the sleep button shouldn't put the system to sleep. Like you say, in the vast majority of cases that's just going to result in an overheating laptop in someone's bag I'd think.
Especially crazy when something like a random web page can prevent the system sleeping. Laptop won't turn off... which of my 70 tabs is it?!
Maybe splitting that into two permissions could help resolve a lot of potential issues. Sure, let lots of things disable the sleep via timeout... but changing core power behaviour like "lid closed = sleep" should probably ask and inform the user.
In Linux, KDE's power manager PowerDevil shows if something is blocking device or display sleep for example. I don't think it's hard to add an indicator in macOS, too.
Why is this not an opt-in thing? Heck, why can’t I turn it off? I can could the number of tabs that I want to allow to function when “sleeping” on zero fingers.
Another option might be another section for apps preventing sleep, like power hungry applications.
An indicator and selective overrides is the way, IMHO. Invisible if you don't look, but it's there when you need it.
so, like a white picket fence vs an invisible fence™ for your dog: white picket fence (not to mention two kids) is so unsightly people would never use it as a metaphor for bliss, why not just give the dog his unexpected-can't-see-it-coming-shock collar? let him discover through repeated trial and error what he's allowed and what he is not.
sounds about right, you've help me articulate what I don't like about modern so-called design
In Europe, in some cities you see huge planters with blooming flowers. They are well looked after and a bliss to be around them. Look from above, they are strategically placed bollards. Even a tank can't pass through them. Smaller installations are made around banks for example. These "small", ordinary looking planters weigh a couple of tons, plus they're firmly planted to the ground. They are essentially fortified walls, but they don't distract you, and enhance the environment in a way, too.
In Amsterdam Central Station, there is a big locker room, which is invisible if you don't know, but very evident when you follow the signs.
My proposition was similar. A section under battery status menu: No Apps Preventing Sleep. Simple. Invisible, unobtrusive, but bright as day when you know where to look.
I don't like the design you gave examples for. I don't like things which I can't find, and only see if the app seems to be in the mood for it. My proposition is a bit more nuanced. You know where it is, you know where to look, but it's not an eye sore or a distraction.
Did author mean to write "option was enabled" instead?
That would make it much clearer that enabling it = fewer wakes.
Editing after composing is tricky, to catch such issues.
What were you hoping to achieve by doing that?
If things are set to a really long time, >=12 hours, you find out the next day when everything is broken (or you get alerts in the middle of the night). If you set them to a randomized 15-90m span, you get things breaking immediately when you screw up the dhcp server.
It's just been a couple of times, but I've definitely done it (e.g. bridged a couple of networks that shouldn't have been).
But mostly, it's the other two things: it provides me with a list of hosts active now, and if the DHCP server is subtly broken I get a sentinel signal of something being wrong earlier (and it tends to be a partial instead of complete failure).
One more bonus: if I move something to a static lease, out of the pool, it'll renumber in a reasonable time and I don't need to go kick link state to get it to request again.
Things like really big caches and really long lease times: They're good for average performance, and they can let you ride out small problems. The flip side is that they tend to mask problems and to create really big demand transients at times. The trick is always to find a good middle ground.
Like you said though, it’s pre Apple silicon so who really knows! Maybe it decided to do some other stuff while it was awake?
Bluetooth and WiFi radios on Macs are also semi-independent. They can keep connections alive while the system is in deep sleep.
Waking a big processor, frequency scaling it and turning it off is surprisingly complicated. We disabled SpeedStep in our clusters since frequency scaling visibly affected performance of the systems due to overhead incurred by frequency change. Same is true for waking / sleeping big silicon.
It's complicated, it's wasteful.
Some of the Intel's biggest improvements as their micro-architecture evolved were reduction of the frequency scaling overhead and its performance impact, but this never made the news back in the day because its effect was invisible in consumer class systems even in its most primitive form.
> Maybe it decided to do some other stuff while it was awake?
That's called Power Nap and is enabled only if your computer is connected to power, by default.
I’m sure both Microsoft and Apple have entire teams with incredibly full backlogs dealing with power management. And I’m sure half their time is spent dealing with “messes” caused by other teams doing wild and crazy (but somehow theoretically useful) shit.
It’s clearly not an easy problem.
Closed source OSes are such a bane.
On the other hand, I don't consider my computer to wake up, take a backup, check system/app updates and my mails and handle those while I'm sleeping as a feature, not a bug.
It's actually not. As a user I'd expect the device to wake up and still have the same IP address via a continuation of the lease.
Yes, the correct way would be a longer lived DHCP lease, but el-cheapo ISP routers often lock down such settings.
When I put a machine into standby, I want it to go in a standby state, and then stay there until I explicitly wake it -- not keep doing whatever background tasks the OS developers, app developers, or whatever other third parties think they need to keep doing.
now we essentially have sleep++ and no option to set it back to vanilla sleep.
When I open the lid of the mac it takes maybe 20-30 seconds to resume. I consider this a small price to pay in exchange for reliable sleep and less battery drain with the lid closed.
If you want to try this, run in the terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25
If you don't like it, you can restore defaults with:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
If that works you can try to isolate it further.
Yes, I realize alternatives exist, but this works so smoothly on Apple devices.
If logging out of iCloud does NOT fix the problem, you eliminated a bunch of potential issues at once.
I am more Android guy, so I am not yet familiar with the options. Does the iPad have a power usage app describing what apps/services are using the power? Bluetooth for one to keep the Apple Pencil ready, I suppose.
This seems to be available as a first party config option
Mine's set to "Only on Power Adapter", which makes sense.
Edit: On an M4 MacBook Air running macOS 26 DB
https://support.apple.com/en-mn/guide/mac-help/mh40774/15.0/...
Turn Power Nap on or off for a Mac desktop computer On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Energy in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) Turn on Enable Power Nap. Note: This option is only available on Intel-based Mac computers.
You can see (and change) the settings via Terminal, 'pmset -g' will show the current options.
> sudo pmset -a powernap 1
-a is an option to set it for battery and plugged-in. If you want only either you can do -b for battery, -c for charger
You can also check the settings with:
> pmset -g
While sleeping with an SSD connected, it seems to wake up periodically and activate the drive to do something. The result? Both the laptop and the SSD eventually overheat, and the battery quickly drains.
The only way I managed to mitigate this issue is by disconnecting all drives and plugging in the MBP before setting it to sleep. It’s an annoying bug, to say the least. It reeks of insufficient quality control and testing…
Turn off WiFi when going to sleep, turn it back on on wake.
I don't need my laptop to be doing things when it's in my bag. It's not a phone, unlike what Apple seems to think...
This is the one biggest thing I loved Apple hardware for over Windows laptops.
When a device goes to sleep, I don't expect it to interact with anything, even if I didn't deliberately turn off all wireless communication.
Apple is the only one doing this. I've had dozens of linux and windows devices by now, and Apple are the only ones to aggressively maintain or connect to wireless while sleeping.
Example: I go out to the park with my Windows laptop. I turn on the computer. I pair my headphones and hop on my phone's wifi tethering. I do some stuff. I close my laptop lid, the system goes to "sleep". My headphones still think they're connected. My phone still shows the laptop is a client. I walk around the park for an hour. My headphones are still connected, my laptop is still a client on the tethering. I sit down, I open my laptop, it wakes up, and it's still connected to everything.
Edit: It's also not warm when plugged in and using chrome with the lid open.
(not to be confused with Insomnia the API testing tool which is great)
Badly behaving peripherals suck.
Back in my day they had a physical power switch that killed the mains to the power supply. Why we even had to format our 40mb hard drive and reimagine the box once a week, both way… in the snow! And we liked it that way! Kids these days!
I asked my dad to buy Windows 95. But he didn't realize he bought the floppy disk edition. So I had to install windows 95 using the very slow floppy drive. It was either 13 or 26 floppies, I don't remember.
Imagine sitting there while that percentage bar moved glacially, waiting for "Insert Disk 12"
But I still remember how great it felt to get a 1 GB hard drive. "We'll never fill it up!!!"
I've an older MacBook Air with a severe battery drain problem.
The battery will last maybe a day or two when SHUT DOWN (not sleep) before being fully drained and refuses to power on.
It's done this since day one.
I tried resetting everything possible which could be reset and nothing helped.
Allegedly the problem is related to a Bluetooth radio which does not shut down properly but as usual Apple is tight-lipped, and the cult members that moderate their community forum try to gaslight you into believing the computers are perfect and you're doing something wrong.
Eventually I just gave up and lugged the power adapter everywhere.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102888
Get a semi-new Apple laptop and then let us know how terrible the power management is.
So your solution to Apple's terrible power management is to give them even more of my money?
As I said, it did this since it was brand new. Battery cycles have nothing to do with it. It's a macOS or hardware problem in the SMC.
I'd wager all of the improvements are from the silicon itself and not anything Apple has done with macOS.
could they have used larger fans to reduce that noise? yes, definitely, and probably should have. but it's hard to beat using the whole device as a radiator.