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I've read practically every question and answer I can find that mention the pmset command, after I discovered it was behind the most frustrating thing about my new MacBook Pro. I say MY MacBook Pro, it actually belongs to my employer - that may have a bearing later on, I'll come back to that.

I've used Macs for 20 years, and I've owned three Powerbooks/MacBooks in that time. I'm used to just closing the lid (power lead plugged in or not) and coming back to it and just resuming what I was doing.

This new machine keeps shutting down when it's in sleep mode. I open the lid and get the big white apple log on a black background and have to log in and wait while it attempts to restore my windows.

Sure, Apple have made a good fist of getting applications back up and running again, but many of the applications I use clearly don't get a chance to save their state before the computer turns itself off. They go back to the state they were in the last time the app was launched, not the last time it was being used. I have to re-open projects, move windows back where they were, restore documents that have emergency backups etc.

I just want the old sleep routine back. I've used pmset to turn hibernate mode to 0, which is what everyone says to do but it doesn't work. It's obviously to do with the EU energy saving law, so I figured it might be the standbydelay setting so I've turned that off too. I've messed about with all the settings, turning everything off to just get the thing to sleep normally and that's whether it's plugged in, or on battery. I'm prepared to take the modest hit on battery life. I'm on battery at the moment and here are my current settings:

standbydelay         0
standby              0
halfdim              1
hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
powernap             0
gpuswitch            2
disksleep            3600
sleep                5
autopoweroffdelay    0
hibernatemode        0
autopoweroff         0
ttyskeepawake        1
displaysleep         5
tcpkeepalive         1
acwake               0
lidwake              1

One possible wrinkle I'm vaguely aware of is that FileVault is enabled. Like I said, it's a work computer so I'm not permitted to disable FileVault. I understand this may have some bearing on my options but I'm not sure exactly what.

I have resorted to playing streams overnight with the volume all the way down just to stop me having to start all over again in the morning but that's not really an option when on battery power.

What on Earth do I need to do to get normal sleep operations the like of which I've been used to for a fifth of a century?

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  • Did the computer always have this behavior? Did you use the "pmset" command before this behavior occurred? - Have you considered that this could be a hardware problem? (try running Apple Hardware Test etc.) - Normally either the MacBook Pro should (by default) just to go sleep the normal way as you say, or if the battery level becomes very low hibernate. When hibernating the current RAM contents is saved to disk, and an extra wait occurs when you open up the laptop again, but programs aren't restarted. The behaviour you describe is definitely not normal.
    – jksoegaard
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 7:56
  • It's always had this behaviour, as has my colleague's new computer since we took possession at the beginning of the year. Hibernatemode was originally set to 3. 0 is supposed to make it work the old way as you describe. Are you in the EU? I do wonder if this is specific to European settings. I've read that the machine turns off to conserve energy in order to comply with EU restrictions on energy use. What I'm not sure about is whether that's something that can be controlled via pmset or if it's some change in the firmware that they've had to implement.
    – ThisLeeNoble
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 8:01
  • Yes, I'm in EU. And no, there's no stupid EU restrictions on energy use like that.
    – jksoegaard
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 8:07
  • To be clear, it does sleep normally and wake normally for a certain period of time, but after about 3 hours of sleep when I open the lid it will boot with the black screen, possibly restore from hibernation, but it relaunches all my apps which is the problem, as they don't have the same state they were left in. This is why I thought it was down to the standbydelay as, if you read here: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/113954/… this seems to relate to the EU Power directive
    – ThisLeeNoble
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 8:14
  • That EU "thing" only relates to when the laptop is connected to AC Power. Basically, if your MacBook Pro has this feature, and you leave it closed up for more than 4 hours with the AC charger plugged in, it will save its state to disk and power down. You won't loose any data, and your programs won't need to be restarted from scratch. You haven't detailed which model of MacBook Pro you have - you also didn't include in the original question that this only happens after 3 hours of sleep. It sounds more and more like a problem with battery calibration.
    – jksoegaard
    Commented Mar 21, 2018 at 8:23

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