How To Keep My Mac From Going To Sleep?

If you use a Mac and have your screen set to the “Sleep” mode, your battery may not be lasting as long as it used to. Isn't that annoying? I'm going to show you how to keep your Mac from going to sleep  and save some battery life in 10 minutes.

It is very annoying when you are on your computer, you went to have a glass of water, only to come back and see that your computer went to sleep mode. This happened to all of us at some point. That's why today I'm here to show you how to keep your Mac from going to sleep.

Here I have given three methods. The first one is the most effective. The rest are some extra options that you can try.

Using Energy Saver from System Preferences

In this method you are going to use the Energy Saver menu from System Preferences:

1. Click the “Apple” icon on the top left corner of your desktop.
2. Hover over to “System Preferences” and click on it.
3. Find the “light bulb” icon that is called “Energy Saver”. Enter this option by double-clicking on the icon.
   
4. A window will open that will give you different “sleep” options for the computer.
5. If you adjust the “Computer Sleep” bar to the “Never” point the computer will not go to sleep. But your display may still go to sleep.
   
6. To prevent your display from going to sleep, adjust the “Display Sleep” bar to the “Never” option.
7. Uncheck the option called "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". This will keep your computer awake.
8. If you want, you can check or uncheck the “Wake for Ethernet network access” option. It won’t be a problem.
9. When you choose the “Never” option from the bar, a warning box will pop up. Click “Ok” on the box to save your changes.
   
10. If you wish to restore the default settings and start over, click the “Restore” button below.
    
11. Click the “Schedule” button on the bottom corner to make a schedule for your computer to go to sleep and wake.
12. Check the "Start up or wake" and "Sleep" boxes to edit the options.
13. Set the days or a day and time as your wish.
    

If you are using a MacBook (laptop), you may find a few differences here. There will option for both battery and power adapter.

1. Choose the "Battery" option to edit the sleep and wake options while you are on battery power. Do the same for the power adapter by choosing the "Power Adapter" option.
   
2. Just like a desktop, set the bar to “Never” and you are all set.

Using the Terminal

Here I have used the terminal to keep Mac from going to sleep. To do that:

1. Open the terminal for macOS.
   
2. Now type the following command: “caffeinate -d -t 5”.
   
3. This will keep your computer awake for 5 minutes before going to sleep.
4. Change the number to 99999 or longer and your computer will not go to sleep.

Using the No-Sleep App

For this method you have to use the No-Sleep app:

1. Click here to download the app.
2. Install the app using standard procedure.
3. Now you will find the “Zz” icon on the top. Click it.
4. From the menu, choose “Enable NoSleep” to keep your Mac from going to sleep.
   
5. If you are using a laptop, choose the preferences option from the menu.
6. From the window, you can turn-on or turn-off the NoSleep option for both “Battery” and “Power Adapter”.
   

Summary: Keep My Mac from Going to Sleep

• Open System Preferences.
• Click on Energy Saver.
• Uncheck the "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" option.
• Uncheck the "Put display to sleep when possible" option.
• Check the "Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off and Close System Preferences.