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MacBook Pro Insomnia

manuel.bernhardt.io

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Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#121

Post by mananaysiempre »

nsksl wrote: post #116
elicash wrote: post #115

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.

Wait, low temperatures drain your battery? I would’ve expected the opposite.

I wouldn’t expect it to happen due to an AC unit, but yes, if you go out in -15°C 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.

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#122

Post by asoneth »

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!"

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#123

Post by asoneth »

nucleardog wrote: post #98
atombender wrote: post #39

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 h…

> 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 applic…

> 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?

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#124

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

nucleardog wrote: post #98
atombender wrote: post #39

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 h…

> 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 applic…

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).

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#125

Post by unit_circle »

teejmya wrote: post #51

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 defa…

This is the simplest solution that enables the behavior that I think most people who care enough to comment here want

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#126

Post by smarks »

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?

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#127

Post by bredren »

nucleardog wrote: post #98
atombender wrote: post #39

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 h…

> 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 applic…

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.

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#128

Post by JKCalhoun »

OldfieldFund wrote: post #79
JKCalhoun wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harsh suggestion: log out of iCloud on the device. If that works you can try to isolate it further.

how do you work without iCloud? Yes, I realize alternatives exist, but this works so smoothly on Apple devices.

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.

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#129

Post by sgerenser »

jaggederest wrote: post #117
mmis1000 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a dummy hdmi plug will do the job?

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.

A dummy plug isn't just the end cut off of an HDMI cable, it actually simulates a monitor with EDID.

Re: MacBook Pro Insomnia

#130

Post by teekert »

atombender wrote: post #39

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 h…

“ 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.
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