If you’re like most people, you probably rely on a Mac to do your day-to-day work. But if you’re like many Mac users, your computer can start to feel sluggish after a while. That’s because many Macs come with a built-in sleep mode that helps conserve power, but it can be tough to get your machine out of sleep mode. There are a few ways to get your Mac out of sleep mode without using additional software. The first is to use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+Shift+S. This will force the computer into standby mode. To get back into normal use, you’ll need to press Cmd+Shift+ESC again. Another way to get your Mac out of sleep mode is to use the Apple menu and select “Sleep.” This will put the computer into hibernation mode instead of standby or normal use. To wake up the machine, you’ll need to press Apple+Option+Esc. If none of these methods work for you, there are some third-party apps that can help you get your Mac out of sleep mode more easily. One such app is Power Nap, which allows users to set specific times for their computer to go into and exit sleep mode automatically. ..
Does your Mac go to sleep at inopportune times? Would you like to keep it awake, but don’t want to install additional software? With this tiny little command line trick, you can keep your Mac awake for a specified durations or indefinitely.
RELATED: How to Temporarily Prevent Your Mac from Sleeping
In the past we’ve told you that you can use a handy little app called Caffeine to keep your Mac awake. Caffeine is great because it has been around awhile, it’s free, and it just plain works. But, you may not want to install and run an application for such a simple function, which can be accomplished just as easily from a Terminal window.
To open the Terminal, you can either open the Applications > Utilities folder and double-click it from there, or invoke Spotlight with Command+Space and search for it.
Once the Terminal is open, simply type caffeinate, press Enter, and your Mac will stay awake for as long as you leave the Terminal running. You can minimize or hide it, and your Mac will not go to sleep until you use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C to interrupt the command.
Okay, that’s great, but the Caffeine application allows you to set how long the computer stays awake. What about using the Terminal method?
No problem, the Terminal can do that too. In fact, unlike Caffeine, you can choose any duration you like, not just a specific duration from a list. In this case, we’ve specified we want to add a duration using the switch -t plus time in seconds. In this case, we’re allowing the computer to stay awake for 3600 seconds (or one hour).
We’ve added an ampersand (&) to the end of the argument so that the command runs in the background. Using & allows us to continue to use the terminal while the caffeinate command runs in the background.
There are other arguments you can apply to the caffeinate command as well.
To prevent the display from sleeping, use caffeinate -d. To prevent the system from idle sleeping, use caffeinate -i. If you want to prevent the disk from going idle then you want to use the “caffeinate -m” command.
Finally, and this one is particularly useful for laptop users, if you want keep your system awake while it is plugged into AC power, use caffeinate -s.
Of course, if you don’t want to use the command line, you can always change the sleep timeout in the Energy Saver preferences.
However, this isn’t exactly the most convenient method if you want to make easy sleep changes on the fly.
So, there you have it, keeping your Mac awake is just that simple. You can either use the Caffeine app, the caffeinate command, or adjust the Energy Saver settings. Whatever method you decide to use, we’re sure you’ll find it easy to keep your Mac from sleeping.
