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My Macbook Pro will not sleep even though it is set in System Preferences → Energy Saver.
I'm running OS X 10.7.3.
Another safe boot revealed that the auto sleep mode actually is working. I believe that it would probably have worked the last time I've tried it as well - but, since the sleep occurs several minutes later than the time defined in the Energy Saver settings, I did not notice this.
What about the 'normal' boot?
I've basically tested the auto sleep with all my menu extras enabled one by one, because the iotop command mentioned by @StuWilson didn't show anything helpful to me. As it turns out the menu extra Stack Exchange Notifier caused insomnia.
The biggest cause of macs not entering idle state is usually disk activity.
I'd suggest that you boot into Safe Boot mode then use Activity Monitor to see if any processes are causing IO operations.
If you do see activity then try using iotop in terminal, it will give you a breakdown of Process ID (PID) and the app or process name doing the IO operations.
sudo iotop -C 5 10
This might not be your problem, but I've had the same issue for a long time and couldn't find an answer for me, so I'll post what worked for me in case someone comes along later.
My MacBook Pro (and later, my iMac, since I used Migration Assistant) would not sleep when left idle for anything. It would sleep with the lid closed, or if I explicitly told it to, but would not sleep when left alone, as it should have per my preferences in Energy Saver.
I had already checked pmset -g assertions and turned off sharing and other wake-on-LAN settings, and nothing seemed to work. Monitoring pmset -g pslog, I found that the computer would go to sleep at the scheduled time, and wake back up a few seconds later, reporting as wake reason only whatever had been called last—even if it was the power button (that is, it said I had pressed the power button when I had not. That scared me). I had read this and a dozen other answers and forums and couldn't get anywhere.
I found a hint by checking pmset -g log which was a little more detailed than pslog. It turned out that every time the computer went to sleep, a process "cancelled" like so:
3/13/13 12:00:12 AM CDT Sleep Software Sleep Sleep: Using AC 6492 secs
3/13/13 12:00:12 AM CDT Cancelled Kernel: Response from WDDMService is to cancel state change
Looking up WDDMService in Activity monitor, it turned out to be a background daemon that was installed by the notorious "SmartWare" that came on a Western Digital External drive. So I killed the process, and the computer went to sleep as it should! Since I don't use the software, I removed it from launchd (which I think it called the .plist? I didn't really know what I was doing there) so it wouldn't appear again. Everything works fine now!
I had the same problem in Mavericks with a brand new Macbook Pro Retina (Late 2013). When I closed the lid and left the laptop closed overnight it never went to sleep. In the morning, the battery would be dead or very low.
As it turns out... my problem was due to a piece of software installed by my company's IT:
As noted in this SED setup article:
Hibernation also called Safe Sleep is not supported with PGP WDE, when a Mac goes to sleep and runs out of battery power the Mac will shut down and not go into safe sleep. It’s important to turn off the machine if it will run out of battery power
Here is Symantec's official reason why
PGP Whole Disk Encryption is not supported with hibernation mode in the Mac OS X. In Mac OS X, an image file is created upon hibernation of the system. Once power is restored, the state of the system is restored, including any open programs or other processes that were running. The location of this file is in /var/vm/sleepimage and is the size of RAM memory on the system.
This mode may be referred to as Safe Sleep, Deep Sleep, or Hibernation. This is not the normal Sleep mode in which the power can remain on, but the system is essentially idle. This mode does not keep an image of the processes, but rather the information is stored in the RAM memory.
The Mac OS X operating system does not support foreign file systems for hibernation. Mac OS X Hibernation mode is not supported with "boot != root". This "boot != root" is essentially the system used by Mac to boot a foreign file system. For PGP Whole Disk Encryption to boot a system, a special file system is used which is considered foreign. As PGP Whole Disk Encryption is considered a foreign file system, hibernation mode is not supported by the Mac OS X.
As a safeguard to prevent system issues and data loss, PGP Desktop disables the hibernation mode on Mac OS X. Although Sleep will still work, deep sleep does not build a sleep image.
