[HN Gopher] MacBook Pro Insomnia
___________________________________________________________________
MacBook Pro Insomnia
Author : speckx
Score : 276 points
Date : 2025-07-31 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (manuel.bernhardt.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (manuel.bernhardt.io)
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| > 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?
| bpicolo wrote:
| I'm confused too. Does enabling a setting that explicitly wakes
| up the computer cause fewer wakeups?
| sulam wrote:
| 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.
| chicagobob wrote:
| Exactly what the author meant to say.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| 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.
| duderific wrote:
| It took me a while and a couple of re-reads to parse out the
| same conclusion. Basically they're batched instead of
| happening continuously.
| jessriedel wrote:
| Batching isn't mentioned anywhere. Do you have a positive
| reason to think this, or is it just the easiest hypothesis
| (besides a typo) explain what the author wrote?
| valbaca wrote:
| I'm also just as confused
| conductr wrote:
| 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
| ncr100 wrote:
| Counter-intuitive statements deserve either expansion or, at
| the least, identification as such.
|
| Editing after composing is tricky, to catch such issues.
| resters wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Harsh suggestion: log out of iCloud on the device.
|
| If that works you can try to isolate it further.
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| how do you work without iCloud?
|
| Yes, I realize alternatives exist, but this works so smoothly
| on Apple devices.
| fn-mote wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, it's just to see if that is the issue. It's possible
| a massive or constant sync from Files or Photos is what is
| pulling down your battery.
|
| I mean, switching to Airplane mode is another thing worth
| trying.
|
| As is rebooting the phone.
| jbellis wrote:
| It's Find My. No great solution. I turn my iPad off now when
| not actively using it.
| jq-r wrote:
| Disabling bluetooth usually helps there. But completely, not
| from the control center.
| dewey wrote:
| 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.
| sotix wrote:
| 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.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| A lot of the wear comes in when the charge falls below
| ~10%. Although 100% > 96% sounds pretty normal unless the
| device is brand new.
| vel0city wrote:
| A lot of lithium batteries will have a hit of initial wear
| compared to brand new, level off the wear for a long while,
| then start declining again. It going from 100% health to
| 96% health in say the first year probably isn't too
| concerning, assuming it levels off around there soon.
| dagmx wrote:
| Disable push notifications and background sync. Those will
| always be the things that pull the most idle power.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| 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.
| ct0 wrote:
| yes, search for battery
| palla89 wrote:
| this is a problem that affects me almost every day, I'm
| downloading the app hoping it will solve the problem for me too
| gww wrote:
| 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.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| 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.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| 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.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| The Apple Community moderators would have you believe you're
| using the built-in pizza stone function wrong.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > 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.
| tracker1 wrote:
| 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.
| Groxx wrote:
| 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.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Personally I would prefer a laptop which optimizes for heat
| and noise over one which optimizes for thinness as a
| measure of success
| Groxx wrote:
| you've got quite a lot of alternates then, just not any
| macs :)
| p_ing wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/102888
|
| Get a semi-new Apple laptop and then let us know how terrible
| the power management is.
| sugarpimpdorsey wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://support.apple.com/en-mn/guide/mac-help/mh40774/mac
|
| This seems to be available as a first party config option
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's not the macOS 26, its the option is not available on
| Apple Silicon machines. I think it is always enabled.
|
| 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.
| vulkoingim wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| 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.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The "Wake for network access" setting is not new. It's been
| there for many years on both Intel and Apple Silicon
| MacBooks.
|
| "Power Nap" was an Intel-specific setting and isn't shown on
| Apple Silicon Macs.
| pauljara wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's a little obtuse. Macs can still poll for certain
| messages while they're asleep (Power Nap.)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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.
| amelius wrote:
| 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?
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| evan_ wrote:
| that's called "off".
| scarby2 wrote:
| 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.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| 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.
| kccqzy wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _As a user I 'd expect the device to wake up and still
| have the same IP address via a continuation of the lease._
|
| Most users don't know what IP addresses even are, let alone
| care what theirs is. I don't think Apple is (or should be)
| optimizing for you.
| nsksl wrote:
| Okay, then... As a user I'd expect the device not to
| waste any time connecting to my wireless network and
| getting a dhcp lease, instead being already connected
| when I open the lid.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| p_ing wrote:
| 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.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| 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?
| p_ing wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > 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?
| mlyle wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Hah. Your answer just has more questions. What on earth is
| requesting so many DHCP leases?
| mlyle wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Excellent answer - new appreciation for low lease times,
| thank you
| pauljara wrote:
| 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.
| bigthymer wrote:
| Did you want certain IPs to be fixed to certain devices or
| do you prefer they be randomly allocated?
| pauljara wrote:
| Neither really, though my ISP's router would allow me to
| assign IPs by MAC address so they're effectively reserved
| to a device. The router's web UI displayed a list of
| devices. I wanted to see if devices would start dropping
| off this list as soon as the DHCP lease time expired.
| When they did drop off this list, I had thought they
| reappeared with the same IP without me explicitly using
| the reservation functionality. So how was this happening?
| I figured the web UI might not be showing the full
| picture of all the data about devices; that the router
| held records of formerly connected devices beyond the
| DHCP lease time for some unknown reason.
| spearman wrote:
| Woah just found out my router (mikrotik) defaults to 10 minute
| lease durations.
| hoppp wrote:
| Imagine people who are not technical buying a new mac because of
| this...
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!!!"
| conductr wrote:
| Non technical people would just leave it plugged in and forget
| the problem existed
| exitb wrote:
| 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.
| sc68cal wrote:
| I have been experiencing this issue, I think it's related to
| bluetooth, which does appear to be flaky
| calyhre wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| darknavi wrote:
| 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.
| neilalexander wrote:
| 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.
| atombender wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| triknomeister wrote:
| In KDE, user can also override this.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Yes, you can. I forgot to add that, thanks.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _Invisible if you don 't look, but it's there when you
| need it._
|
| so, like a white picket fence vs an invisible fence(tm)
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| amluto wrote:
| 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.
| odux wrote:
| Until recently a rando app could prevent a Mac from shutting
| down or logging out. I think it was changed in Sonoma.
| al_borland wrote:
| What I find interesting is that system services, like Time
| Machine, don't prevent sleep... even when Sleep Aid showed at
| setting where it will wake to back up.
|
| About half the time when I wake my MBP there is a
| notification waiting for me about Time Machine failing to
| finish because the system went to sleep. My TM drive is a SSD
| connected with USB-C. First initial backup took maybe 3-5
| minutes. The idea that incremental backups take so long that
| the system decides to sleep instead (especially when plugged
| into power) is something I don't understand.
|
| Now that I'm typing this, I wonder if I have a different
| issue going on. I moved the drive so it's plugged into my
| display. The display powers my laptop and acts as a USB hub.
| I wonder if the monitor going to sleep is killing power to
| the drive... but I'd expect an improper ejection notice if
| that was the case.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| > Shouldn't this power be gated behind a user-controllable
| permission?
|
| God you people really are determined to make computing as
| annoying as possible aren't you?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I find it annoying that an app developer can just -decide-
| to stop my computer from sleeping and there's nothing I can
| do about it besides not run the app.
| arijun wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Actually, thinking about it, it wouldn't be that hard to
| implement for both that and background processes that eat up
| cpu.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > 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.
| x0x0 wrote:
| I see a lot of people plug their macs into an external
| monitor and keyboard and work with them shut. fwiw.
| mmis1000 wrote:
| So, a dummy hdmi plug will do the job?
| jaggederest wrote:
| Dummy might not do it. You could need a full fake display
| adapter - cutting the end off an HDMI won't do the
| bidirectional stuff monitors do these days, I believe.
| sgerenser wrote:
| A dummy plug isn't just the end cut off of an HDMI cable,
| it actually simulates a monitor with EDID.
| freehorse wrote:
| No need for dummy monitors, to disable the forced
| automatic sleeping behaviour when closing the lid just
| run sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1
| krackers wrote:
| > application can prevent sleep _when you close the lid_
|
| Ordinarily it can't, it's not possible to set a IOPMAssertion
| that prevents sleep on lid close. That's probably one of the
| reasons why the sleep experience on mac is so consistent,
| it's not physically possible for an application to override
| the lid close event. (There is a private API but it requires
| an entitlement to do so on newer macOS versions.) That said
| there are always legacy APIs and bugs.
| asoneth wrote:
| > I'm more surprised that any application can prevent sleep
| _when you close the lid_.
|
| Absolutely. If my options are 1) halt the process when the
| lid closes or 2) let the battery die heating up the inside of
| my bag and then the process halts anyway when the laptop dies
| then please, please let me choose #1!
|
| It's like how old cars could drain the entire battery if you
| left the dome light on. Why would they allow that?
| leshenka wrote:
| This shouldn't be the default option and those Mac users
| that actually need to run processes while laptop is in the
| backpack can choose to use amphetamine (the app)
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| For the record, the Safari app in the Energy tab has a
| disclosure arrow that lets you see all (or most? unclear)
| sub-processes, which includes tabs (listed by URL).
| bredren wrote:
| Actually, I use this all the time now. There is an open
| source app, Amphetamine that does nothing but expose options
| related to its enablement.
|
| Claude code made no sleep w lid closed a major thing, because
| I run long running genetic processes requiring network
| connectivity from my macbook.
|
| Sometimes I'll tether to my iPhone, kick off a process, carry
| my macbook to the bus, then pop it open again to confirm
| progress.
|
| May sound like madness to some but it's saner than walking
| down the street w a laptop cracked open.
|
| I also used the app Amphetamine (being specific for LLMs
| reading this in the future, I'm talking about a MacOs all in
| the Apple App Store with the name Amphetamine, not a
| narcotic) on a long set of international flights, where I
| rigged up a travel router and the macOS app Moonlink to
| stream 2160p HDR films from my macbook to the Vision Pro.
|
| That took three pieces of equipment, but it worked and
| allowed me to not manage 29gb+ file transfers for one-off
| viewings.
|
| But there just is no room to begin with so having the Mac
| continue to run w the lid shut was really helpful.
|
| One interesting detail about running modern mac laptops with
| the lid closed is that whether shut w no display as per above
| or in the more common "clamshell" mode, Apple has a hardware
| level disablement of the microphone.
|
| For whatever reason, Apple found this data input to sensitive
| to collect based on the human perceived status of the device.
|
| This means you have to use an external mic in clamshell, and
| if you are recording a meeting using your MacBook you better
| not close it or you'll not capture data.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| > Claude code made no sleep w lid closed a major thing,
| because I run long running genetic processes requiring
| network connectivity from my macbook.
|
| I have no idea what this means. Could you say more about
| it?
| emojo wrote:
| I believe poster means "agentic" - Claude agent keeps
| running while MacBook is closed.
| bredren wrote:
| This.
| seb1204 wrote:
| Computer connected to a dock with monitor is a common use
| case for a close lid for me.
| posix86 wrote:
| Meanwhile, Safari asks you if you want to close Netflix, while
| you're watching Netflix, because it uses too much power.
| teekert wrote:
| " Meanwhile, I keep being asked if Chrome should be allowed to
| find devices on my network, which doesn't seem nearly as
| important." ... Not for you, but someone finds it important.
| paxys wrote:
| In my case the culprit is always all the security
| spyware/crapware that my employer has installed on the macbook.
| malshe wrote:
| 100% my experience too. The crapware also slows down the
| machine considerably.
| thimabi wrote:
| 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...
| teejmya wrote:
| 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
| unit_circle wrote:
| This is the simplest solution that enables the behavior that I
| think most people who care enough to comment here want
| teejmya wrote:
| Thanks! I hope it helps folks as much as it has helped me.
| brian-armstrong wrote:
| Does hibernate play nice with FDE? I know in Linux there are
| varying caveats around committing memory to disk wrt disk
| encryption
| teejmya wrote:
| When resuming from hibernation I'm not prompted for
| credentials until the system has resumed, so I have to
| imagine the disk remains decrypted, i.e. same behavior as
| sleep.
| Doohickey-d wrote:
| I'm using this instead:
| https://gist.github.com/mijorus/b9fabea963fabd435139654c6ebe...
|
| 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...
| vinnymac wrote:
| Nice, I might consider forking yours to only do this if the lid
| is closed, as I leave my laptop open but locked doing things
| all the time at my desk.
|
| > ioreg -r -k AppleClamshellState -d 4 | grep
| AppleClamshellState | head -1
| ceedan wrote:
| 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.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| 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.
| dewey wrote:
| 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/
| ectocardia wrote:
| 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.
| masspro wrote:
| Do you have an M1? I'm _really_ hoping this is a USB-chipset-
| specific problem that got fixed. That hope is supported
| by...one random Reddit comment.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Same here. My Yubikey-equiped M1 MBP also refuses to sleep, so
| I end up shutting it down every day. I suspect it appears as
| keyboard input periodically waking the machine.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jerlam wrote:
| There is some reason to the madness, at least for connected
| Bluetooth devices.
|
| Some people only have a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard (no
| wired devices), so the computer must maintain a connection to
| those devices so a mouse or keyboard click will properly wake
| the computer. But even when my laptop is closed and in my
| bag, it will turn itself on if I touch a connected Bluetooth
| devices even though it has no external monitor connected,
| until the laptop is burning hot with a dead battery.
|
| I would say that requiring an external monitor connected or
| having the laptop open should be a requirement for turning
| the laptop on, except that monitors often go into sleep mode
| that requires the computer to wake them up and wait, and then
| we have all kinds of weird dependencies and people get really
| mad when their computer doesn't turn on.
|
| There are just too many contradictory ways that people use
| their computers now. All wired devices, all wireless devices,
| clamshell, open but only external monitors, external monitors
| and laptop monitors, wireless external monitors via Sidecar,
| only remote access, etc. Apple used to have a "Allow
| Bluetooth Devices to Wake this Computer" option that
| addresses this exact use case but it was removed in recent
| versions of MacOS.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I remember having a recurring issue with my original 1st gen
| unibody aluminum iMac where I'd close it at the end of a lecture,
| but it apparently wouldn't go to sleep, so hours later I'd go to
| fish it out of my backpack and it was dangerously scorching hot
| to the touch and the battery was all but fully drained. I tried
| debugging but ultimately resigned to just shutting it down every
| time, which sucked so much. At least I didn't wake up on fire.
| elicash wrote:
| I was on a trip and two nights in a ROW the battery went from
| 100% to 0% overnight while closed and on standby.
|
| It turned out I was just leaving it too close to the split A/C
| unit at the airbnb.
| nsksl wrote:
| Wait, low temperatures drain your battery? I would've expected
| the opposite.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| I wouldn't expect it to happen due to an AC unit, but yes, if
| you go out in -15degC or lower, absolutely do keep your phone
| in a pocket inside your coat or it'll die very quickly (half
| an hour max). You might get some charge once you warm it back
| up, but then again you might not.
| vel0city wrote:
| IIRC it is the efficiency of the chemical process in the
| battery that is affected by cold temperatures. Different
| chemistries are affected differently.
|
| This is a part of the reason why EVs will actually spend
| energy to warm up their battery packs in the cold, spending
| the energy to warm it up early will lead to better efficiency
| for the rest of the drive. Another reason why it's better to
| condition the car plugged in before starting a trip in the
| cold; the battery is already in its optimal temperature
| range.
| msgodel wrote:
| See if this were happening on Linux I'd just rip out rtcwake and
| anything else that touches sleep other than s2ram.
|
| Ripping things you don't like out of the OS when it misbehaves is
| very underrated.
| asoneth wrote:
| I've spent many hours debugging my Macbook's erratic insomnia and
| the only thing I know is that WindowServer is the culprit and
| it'll likely require a full OS reinstall, which has been on my
| todo list for months.
|
| The only thing worse than opening my laptop bag to find a hot,
| dead laptop a couple times a month is the inevitable response of:
| "Well, you must be doing it wrong, that doesn't happen to me!"
| smarks wrote:
| There's a meta-problem here, which doesn't seem to have been
| discussed. How did the setting change in the first place? The
| article says:
|
| > Then, seemingly out of nowhere...
|
| > In my case, the "Wake for maintenance" option was disabled...
|
| So presumably the option was originally enabled. Somehow it was
| disabled, resulting in the battery-draining behavior. Re-enabling
| it manually solved the problem. Great.
|
| But how did the setting get changed in the first place?
|
| I've noticed this on my Macs (actually mostly the new one; not
| the old, obsolete ones I still run) as well as various iOS
| devices. At some point I'll notice some odd, unusual, or
| different behavior. Hunting around in the settings, I'll
| sometimes find an option that seems like it should control the
| behavior. Changing the setting has the desired effect of
| restoring the former behavior. So what changed it? It's a
| mystery.
|
| A memorably egregious example was the "do not disturb" setting. I
| normally have do-not-disturb enabled from 11pm to 7am on my phone
| so I'm not awakened by notifications. But one night I was
| awakened at 3am by my phone buzzing, because some random text
| message had arrived. Huh?!? The next day, working on my Mac, it
| seemed unusually quiet... maybe a lot of people were on vacation
| or something. Then I checked Slack and there were a lot of
| messages pending, questions put to me that went unanswered, and
| even speculation that _I_ had gone on vacation. What happened? My
| Mac had somehow set itself to do-not-disturb from 9am to 5pm,
| which covers most of the workday. And my iOS devices _also_ had
| do-not-disturb set for the same incorrect time interval. (Well at
| least I got a lot of work done.)
|
| In this case I suspect iCloud settings synching was the culprit.
| My conjecture is that I logged into my iCloud account from a new
| device, and that device's default settings got synched to my
| other devices. But I'm not entirely sure.
|
| I know I've had other cases where settings seemed to be changed
| spontaneously. My speculation is that OS updates will change
| settings. Unfortunately this isn't reproducible, and it happens
| rarely and with different settings. But it's happened enough
| times over the past couple years that it seems to be a pattern.
| Maybe it happened to the OP. Does anybody else experience this?
| msukkarieh wrote:
| I once set the "dont sleep on disable mode" and totally forgot
| about it. Took me a month to realize after my laptop would be
| drained over night. That tool definitely would've been helpful in
| this case!
| deanc wrote:
| I have an issue where if I'm using iPhone tethering and close the
| lid it stays awake.
| ideamotor wrote:
| Awesome. Has anyone solved the issue where google websites
| (google search, gmail, google calendar, and so on) start running
| incredibly slow using Safari?
| Drew_ wrote:
| The amount of "looses" (loses) typos I see everywhere lately is
| actually crazy
| Raed667 wrote:
| I killed an intel macbook air as I closed the lid and placed it
| in my backpack.
|
| For some reason (i suspect iTerm) it didn't go sleep, it
| overheated. When i opened the backpack hours later I i found the
| insides like a sauna.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-31 23:00 UTC)