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I am looking for a quick way to sleep without closing the lid, or using the mouse.

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5 Answers

up vote 6 down vote

Press the power button. Assuming you haven't reconfigured its behaviour, it should pop up a dialog with options to Sleep, Restart, or Shutdown the laptop. The "Reopen windows when logging back in" checkbox has keyboard focus by default; hitting the Tab key twice will put focus on the Sleep button - hitting the Space bar will then put the MacBook Air to sleep.

(Note that hitting Return will activate the dialog's default action - namely, to shut the computer down.)

Not as quick as a single keyboard shortcut, but faster than the mouse and without closing the lid. :)

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Thank you for mentioning that spacebar triggers the focused button. That was not obvious to me at all. – ryanman Oct 18 '11 at 15:29
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up vote 4 down vote accepted

Press the power button, then S.

As described in this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3273071?start=0&tstart=0

The power button displays the Sleep/Restart/Shutdown dialog. If you then press S the Mac will sleep.

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Nice! Two fewer keystrokes than my solution. :) – Dan J Oct 18 '11 at 16:00
I would like to figure out if there is some rhyme or reason to the 'S' key activating the Sleep button. I wonder if there a consistent convention for which letters activate which buttons in osx. – ryanman Oct 18 '11 at 16:05
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up vote 2 down vote

Another option would be to assign a shortcut to an AppleScript like:

tell app "System Events" to sleep

Or if you have the Alfred Powerpack, you can assign a custom shortcut to the sleep command.

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up vote 1 down vote

You can assign any unused key combination (like fn⌘⌥F12) using System Preferences » Keyboard » Keyboard Shortcuts » Application Shortcuts Click the + button, then under Application, leave All Applications, under Menu Title enter Sleep, and under Keyboard Shortcut, press fn⌘⌥F12.

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Another option, if you're more Terminal-inclined:

  • ⌘space
  • Type Terminal
  • push Enter
  • Type sudo shutdown -s now
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up vote 0 down vote

Keyboard shortcut is Option+Cmd+Eject (the Eject key is at your keyboard upper right corner).

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Not on the new MacBook Air models. No eject key. – Daniel Lawson♦ Oct 18 '11 at 2:30
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