It is quickest to enter and quickest to resume. If sleep mode 0 were to be used on a MacBook, sooner or later the battery would drain and eventually power would be lost, the contents of memory would be lost, and so would every app you were using. This mode is used by desktop Macs because they are plugged into the mains power and this is assumed to be stable and permanently available. You can then continue working exactly where you left off. When you press a key, the Mac wakes up all the components, which resume their normal power state. Every component runs in its lowest power mode and they are barely functioning, but it is sufficient to maintain the contents of memory. The screen is turned off, sinning disks stop spinning (if it has one), the CPU slows right down and so on. This is the default setting on desktop Macs and in this mode the computer is put into a low power state. It all sounds very confusing, but really it is quite straightforward. You can also use the iMac sleep mode on a MacBook and MacBook sleep mode on an iMac. There is another sleep mode, 25, that is not used by any Macs, but you can set it if you want to. An iMac uses sleep mode 0 and a MacBook uses sleep mode 3. What you may not be aware of is that iMacs and MacBooks use different sleep modes.

Be careful or you might loose your work in open apps. However, it is easy to muddle this up with other commands like Command+Ctrl+Power button, which forces the Mac to restart. Open the lid and the MacBook wakes up.Īnother way to put the Mac to sleep is to press Command+Option+Power button. Old MacBooks used to have a flashing LED to show that they are in sleep mode and it is a shame modern Macs don't have this. MacBook owners have another way to put their laptop to sleep and this is by simply closing the lid. This means that it can then be quickly woken so that you can carry on working in a couple of seconds, rather than waiting up to a minute for a normal boot up from cold.

It is still running, but only just enough so it does not lose whatever is running. It looks like it shuts down the Mac, but it actually turns off the screen and switches to a low power consumption mode. Go to the Apple menu on your Mac and there is an option to put the Mac to sleep. There is more to sleep mode on the Apple Mac than you might think and there are hidden settings, different modes and keyboard shortcuts.

Mac sleep command