How to prevent macOS from going to sleep

In this article, you will learn the steps on how to prevent macOS from going to sleep despite the consequences and security implications. Mac has energy-saving features, which includes sleep mode. This mode is designed to activate when your device hasn’t been in use for a while. Please see “how to disable the sleep mode in Windows 10 to never turn off the display, “UEFI, TPM, BitLocker FAQs: Disable Sleep Mode“, and “how to record your screen with PowerPoint and make slide shows.

Note: Not letting your Mac go to sleep can lead to several drawbacks as mentioned above. Also, see How to fix Windows Microsoft Store not opening.

Some of these are increased power consumption which not only results in higher electricity bills. This can also lead to reduced battery lifespan.

• Also, continuous operation can cause the system to overheat, potentially leading to hardware degradation over time.
• Additionally, without regular sleep cycles, software updates and background maintenance tasks that typically occur during sleep might be delayed, potentially affecting system performance and security.
• Lastly, running your Mac continuously without rest may lead to decreased overall performance and responsiveness due to the accumulation of temporary files and memory usage over time.

Here is how to Enable or Disable Mac asking for Password after Sleep or Screen Saver, how to disable power plan in Windows via GPO and Windows Settings, and “Why you should not use Public DNS in Production: Change DNS Server in Windows“

Why prevent Mac from going to sleep?

Configuring your MacBook from going to sleep can be beneficial in so many ways. For me, this was due to an “Uninterrupted Task”.

If you are performing a Time Machine backup or another large data transfer and you do not want your Mac to sleep in the middle of the process it will cause a pause in the backup process in my case. Here is a blog post on How to Backup MacOS to Synology NAS via Time Machine.

Other reasons could be that you are working with intensive tasks like video rendering, data analysis, or compiling code. You want to ensure these processes are complete without being interrupted by sleep.

If you are remotely accessing your Mac with tools like SSH or screen sharing, you need the device to stay awake so that the connection isn’t lost. Also, if the device is utilized for monitoring a security camera, or a network connection. You do not want it to go to sleep and miss important data.

When utilising your Mac as a server (e.g., for hosting a website or running a local server for development). Sleep mode could disrupt these services and this is the last thing you would want to occur.

Other reasons could be when using your Mac is share files or media across a network. You want it to stay awake so others can access the shared content. Lastly, during a presentation or when using your MacBook as a media player. You don’t want the device to go to sleep.

Steps to Prevent Mac from sleeping

To do this, open System Preferences as shown below and click on “Battery“

Click on the Lock in order to be able to make changes.

Enter your password in order to be able to modify settings.

Click on Ok to continue.

Adjust the settings for when your Mac should sleep. Set the display sleep and computer sleep to “Never” as shown below

Ensure to uncheck “Put hard disks to sleep when possible” as well.

Note: When my backup is complete, I will click on Restore Defaults to revert to the default settings in order not to lead to decreased performance etc as discussed above.

Restore to defaults to undo changes as you wish

Please see Disable modern standby on Windows 10 and 11, and how to Change the Log File Directory location in IIS. Also, see how to Create a web page to visualize the output of BitLocker Script.

Prevent MacOS from Going to Sleep via the Terminal

You can use the caffeinate command to temporarily prevent your Mac from sleeping.

Open Terminal, and type caffeinate and press Enter. This will prevent your Mac from sleeping as long as the Terminal window is open.

Note: To set a specific time (e.g., 1 hour), use: caffeinate -t 3600 (3600 seconds = 1 hour).

Other tool

Apps like Amphetamine etc can provide granular control over your Mac’s sleep settings. These methods should help you prevent your MacBook from sleeping thereby ensuring that tasks like backups can continue uninterrupted

Preventing sleep can be crucial to ensuring that important tasks are completed without interruption especially for time-sensitive or resource-intensive operations

I hope you found this task useful on how to prevent macOS from going to sleep. Please feel free to leave a comment below.