FYI: 2013 MacBook Air drops separate Display/System sleep timers.

Ummmm ... that doesn't revert to the old style. It just prevents the computer from sleeping. I tried it on my MBA 13

There currently is NO option to have the display blank out while the computer is still working - in order to save energy. You can't even do that with a screen saver anymore because there is no blank screen saver .

I'm also able to get just display sleep working.

Also, note that the "prevent computer from sleeping" checkbox is only available for the power adapter option. It can't be enabled when running off battery.

doing some research and testing - it seems that I can still set separate display and sleep timeouts using terminal and the pmset command.

ex.

sudo pmset -b sleep 300

will cause the machine to sleep 300 in 300 minutes - or 5 hours on battery

sudo pmset -b displaysleep 15

will cause the display to sleep in 15 minutes while on battery power.

Why apple took the computer sleep option (sudo pmset -b sleep 300 ) out of the UI is a mystery to me for now.

techn0lady said:

doing some research and testing - it seems that I can still set separate display and sleep timeouts using terminal and the pmset command.....

Click to expand...

Gawd I love you!

I want to bid on your 2012 MBA but I just can't shake the desire to shell out $1700 on the new MBA. I've got just under 4 hours to change my mind!

techn0lady said:

Ummmm ... that doesn't revert to the old style. It just prevents the computer from sleeping. I tried it on my MBA 13

There currently is NO option to have the display blank out while the computer is still working - in order to save energy. You can't even do that with a screen saver anymore because there is no blank screen saver .

Click to expand...

Can you dim the screen using the brightness buttons until the screen turns off?

flight said:

Can you dim the screen using the brightness buttons until the screen turns off?

Click to expand...

Oh absolutely!
I can also cut out a piece of cardboard and tape it to the screen to cut off the display.

techn0lady said:

Oh absolutely!
I can also cut out a piece of cardboard and tape it to the screen to cut off the display.

Click to expand...

I don't understand the sarcasm. I was providing a way to "have the display blank while the computer is still working."

There currently is NO option to have the display blank out while the computer is still working

Click to expand...

Edit: Now that I've re-read the post, you must mean that there's no way for the screen to go blank on its own without the computer going to sleep as well. I originally read it as, there is no way to make the screen go blank.

flight said:

Can you dim the screen using the brightness buttons until the screen turns off?

Click to expand...

My understanding was that doing this only turns off the backlight, but the screen is still technically on (you just can't see it). From reading this thread, I thought we were looking for a way to make the screen actually turn off (thus saving resources as the screen does not need to be running), but the computer to still be awake.

EDIT: I read your followup post and it looks like you got that. Nevermind then.

Under the Screen Saver preferences, is there still a "Put Display to Sleep" option under "Hot Corners", or has that changed?

Weaselboy said:

Still there.

Click to expand...

Yes, but it only truly sleeps the display when a machine is plugged in. Activating a sleep screen hotcorner when it's running on battery puts the whole machine to sleep. Which I find infuriating.

Just bought a 2013 MBA. This issue (if I can't fix it) will mean I'll return the laptop.

My intended use is VPN / RDP / Teamviewer for weekends on call and if there is no way to have the screen sleep without losing connection to these services then I can't use the MBA 13.

I'm trying to use the Terminal commands but it's not something I've used before on Mac - any guidance on how to use the 'sudo pmset -b sleep 300' command would be really appreciated:

When I enter it into the terminal window I get:
sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0644, should be 0440
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

teffers said:

When I enter it into the terminal window I get:
sudo: /private/etc/sudoers is mode 0644, should be 0440
sudo: no valid sudoers sources found, quitting

Click to expand...

Something has wrecked the file permissions on your drive, preventing sudo from running.

Try this:

1. Go into your "Applications" Folder, and from there the "Utilities" Folder.
2. Double click on the "Disk Utility" app.
3. On the window that pops up, click on "Macintosh HD" (or whatever you've named your boot drive), and then click "Repair Disk Permissions."

This could take a while, and likely a whole bunch of status messages will pop up similar to what you listed above. Once it's done though, quite Disk Utility and try running sudo again.

Just bought a 2013 MBA. This issue (if I can't fix it) will mean I'll return the laptop.

Click to expand...

I suggest you do it quick then, and either search for a previous (2012) MacBook Air or a current-model MacBook Pro before they get refreshed. Apparently this change was brought about as a result of the new CPU architecture, so no doubt newer Macs going forward might also have this feature change.

Thanks scaredpoet - much appreciated, just trying it now.

If I return this MBA I think I'll not be getting another. I was trying to justify the purchase as I could link it to the better portability the Air gives (I didn't take much convincing lol.)

I kinda guessed it might be related to the new chipset / fantastic battery life etc.

Just seems totally crazy to have it drop this connectivity when the screen goes off on battery power.

Ok so it fixed a bunch of permissions, I entered the command, it asked for my password, I entered it and it put me back to the prompt ... that sound right ?

The pmset command seems to have fixed this for me.


The above seems to get me what I need - the display turns off after 30 minutes but the system does not go to sleep. For battery I did:


So on battery the display turns off after 5 minutes and the system goes to sleep as well. Normally I would have one happen before the other, but this thing wakes up so fast that I don't mind and it probably saves a tiny bit of juice.

If you do these in a different order the command might spit out an error (if you set your computer to sleep BEFORE your display sleeps, basically).

So, now my computer remains awake at all times when plugged in but the display does go ahead and turn itself off. I just wish they'd left the systemp preference pane alone

Should we want to change settings back to factory default, how would we go about that?

teffers said:

Ok so it fixed a bunch of permissions, I entered the command, it asked for my password, I entered it and it put me back to the prompt ... that sound right ?

Click to expand...

Yup, that should do it. Only thing to do now is test the behavior and see if the display goes to sleep without the rest of the system.

Phew ... it seems to have worked for me too.

Best cancel that return to JohnLewis.com ... Thanks scaredpoet

My VPN connection is staying on and my Teamviewer panel on my second client still shows the MBA as online.

Big thank you to technolady and scaredpoet

Suppose the trade off is it won't sleep automatically when we close the lid ?

Or is there something I can do to get that functionality back ?

If not that's fine, I'd still rather have the no sleep when it's open.

I talked to AppleCare support representative on this today. I was told that is has to do with the low power state of the Haswell processor. After talking with an engineer, he determined that this was an intentional merging of the two settings and that it is not changeable. I'm waiting on some answers to questions that I asked, but it appears that there is no way to sleep the display without triggering the Power Nap state.

My only advice for those of us using the new MacBook Airs for business purposes at this time is to set the display to never sleep while on power and to sleep after an hour or so on battery for those who need to ensure that it does not enter the Power Nap state at undesirable times.

Ok, so just as a proof of concept I decided to try and put everything back how it was, and because I wanted to return the functionality of closing the lid inducing immediate sleep.

I looked for the two preference files mentioned above but could only find the first one, so deleted it and it's reset my sleep settings (see below) but still the macbook doesn't automatically sleep when I close the lid.

Anyone able to direct me to be able to reset the behaviour so when the lid is closed it sleeps ;-)

macbook:~ myusername$ pmset -g
Active Profiles:
Battery Power 1*
AC Power 2
Currently in use:
standbydelay 10800
standby 1
halfdim 1
hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage
darkwakes 0
disksleep 10
sleep 1
autopoweroffdelay 14400
hibernatemode 3
autopoweroff 1
ttyskeepawake 1
displaysleep 2
acwake 0
lidwake 1
macbook:~ myusername$

Click to expand...

techn0lady said:

Ummmm ... that doesn't revert to the old style. It just prevents the computer from sleeping. I tried it on my MBA 13

There currently is NO option to have the display blank out while the computer is still working - in order to save energy. You can't even do that with a screen saver anymore because there is no blank screen saver .

Click to expand...

A blank screen saver wouldn't save any power anyway. Almost all of an LCD's power consumption comes from its backlight, which remains on even when all the pixels are showing "black".

markmd624 said:

I talked to AppleCare support representative on this today. I was told that is has to do with the low power state of the Haswell processor. After talking with an engineer, he determined that this was an intentional merging of the two settings and that it is not changeable. I'm waiting on some answers to questions that I asked, but it appears that there is no way to sleep the display without triggering the Power Nap state.

Click to expand...

That is obviously incorrect, as you could have read from the earlier posts in this thread.

I sleep my display just fine without sleeping the whole system, while the laptop is plugged in. The Energy Saver UI limitations are overwritten by the 'pmset' command, as indicated above.