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Please note: Whilst the older question (4 years ago) Do MacBooks have a true "Hibernate" option? has answers that show a hibernate option exists for Macs, it doesn't detail how to make your Mac hibernate. Perhaps this is because that answer was sufficient for older machines (Pre-2015 MacBookPro Retina or pre-Yosemite).

I've been a longtime Windows user and was told Apple's Macs were better. I recently bought a MacBookPro Retina 2015 15" OS X 10.10 Yosemite (SSD). I have not been able to make it hibernate.

I have already enabled the hibernate mode number 25 (as can be seen in the settings below).

I was told that the grey screen with the progress bar upon wakeup indicates the machine was hibernating. I managed to get this grey screen to show up after disabling standby. 

sudo pmset -a standby 0

I was also told I could check what state the machine woke from via the following command:

pmset -g log | grep -i "wake from"

I ran the command but it still shows that I have always been waking from Standby. This is the case when waking from both AC and Battery. E.g.

Wake from Standby [CDNVA] due to EC.PME/User: Using BATT (Charge:92%) 303 secs

I am assuming that if my machine did indeed hibernate then the grep command should show Wake from 'Hibernate' as opposed to 'Standby'.

This makes me wonder if the OS X man pmset command, which brings up the pmset commands manual which is dated 2012 is still valid today. Or perhaps I'm just too new to this.

I have also tried 2 deep sleep apps/widgets. Both end up putting the MBP to Standby instead of Hibernate.

pmset -g shows the following:

Active Profiles:
Battery Power          -1*
AC Power               -1
Currently in use:  
 standbydelay         3  
 standby              0  
 halfdim              1  
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage  
 darkwakes            0  
 gpuswitch            2   
 disksleep            10  
 sleep                1  
 autopoweroffdelay    1  
 hibernatemode        25  
 autopoweroff         1  
 ttyskeepawake        1  
 displaysleep         2  
 acwake               0  
 lidwake              1

PS. Next to sleep it sometimes shows "(sleep prevented by AddressBookSour)"

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  • I guess the obvious question is why you want to fiddle with this rather than letting the OS handle it?
    – nekomatic
    Jun 8, 2016 at 14:18
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    @nekomatic Hibernation is a very useful feature. It allows you to save your state (open apps) before powering down. When powering up everything is where you left off. This is the case for a Windows PC. Howeover, for Macs, my understanding is that Sleep or Standby is not the same as Hibernate in that the machine is not fully powered off. Please see Buscar웃's answer on this question for a graph apple.stackexchange.com/questions/126669/…
    – questioner56
    Jun 8, 2016 at 14:32
  • @Max Ried, the answers in that question highlight hibernatemode 25, which I've already enabled. However, based on the grep command mentioned in my question, my machine still hasn't woken from hibernate. So that question highlights that a hibernate mode exists but doesn't detail how to make it hibernate - perhaps I should say: I couldn't make my machine hibernate after following the answers' instructions.
    – questioner56
    Jun 8, 2016 at 14:34
  • Portable Macs save state to disk automatically. If you haven't experienced an actual problem with the way it works by default then I suggest letting the OS work the way it's designed to, unless or until you do find a problem.
    – nekomatic
    Jun 8, 2016 at 14:37
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    @MaxRied, it's okay perhaps nekomatic was asking the obvious question to try to uncover the underlying need for this question - which may in turn spur a new or better worded question.
    – questioner56
    Jun 8, 2016 at 15:01

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"Sleep" and "Hibernate" on Macs aren't separately choosable. If you sleep a Mac and then leave it asleep on battery until the battery gets low, it will go into "deep sleep" (Apple's term, it's essentially Hibernate) and save battery. On older Macs that supported this, you could force hibernate by pulling the battery out, but that's not possible anymore.

Here's Apple's documentation on Mac sleep, scroll down to the section on "Special Sleep Modes". It may be that the "standby" indication you are seeing is exactly what you're looking for.

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