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Is there any way to set a MacBook Pro to not sleep when you close the lid?
If I close the lid on my Macbook Air (OS X 10.5.8), will it continue downloading files - say from Firefox or Dropbox? Is there any way to make it do this?
Nope. When you close the lid, your Mac goes to sleep and stops all current downloads. If you have a downloadmanager, it will pause the downloads, but it will not keep downloading the files.
If you would like to work with your lid closed, I suggest you connect an external screen or try software like InsomniX, which will keep your Mac awake when the lid is closed.
Also, it might be worth trying extention No Sleep.
If you close the lid with an external display connected, the system should not go to sleep automatically. In that case your downloads would continue. Otherwise, the default behavior when you close the lid is to put the system to sleep. Downloads cannot continue if the system is in sleep mode.
