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How can i force a display to stay asleep?

E

ensjesse

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 29, 2007
30
2
Hello everyone,
So I am one of those guys that keep my desk in the same room I sleep, but can’t stand light of any kind while I am sleeping ( I know this will eventually be a hardship for me sometime, somewhere) .


Sure I know I could just move my desk out of the room and avoid this issue but I would like your input.

I like to leave my Mac book on and open with an external display always plugged in. I do not want to shut down or put it to sleep as I want it to be available 24/7 for some type of remote access. I currently have my display set to sleep after one minute with a hot corner to activate (running on 10.6.2) however at random the displays will wake and thus cause this light eyed sleeper to also wake. I can defeat this partially by killing power to one monitor every night but there is nothing I can do about the internal display short of turning down the backlight. I have wake for Ethernet disabled. Can anyone tell me, how can I do what I need to do? What type of background events cause the display to wake and why? And how if at all, can I stop them from doing this? I just want to only be able to wake the display from suspend or power save when I press a key on an attached keyboard.

Sorry for the long question,

Thanks in advance.
Jesse
 
The only reason the display would light up while it is asleep is if there is an application causing it to do so, or because of some input device waking it up like the mouse or remote or something.

If you use a bluetooth k/m and you have a fairly recent Intel Mac (3-4 or so years, I'm not positive) then you can use it in clamshell mode with the laptop closed but in use with the external display. It wouldn't solve the situation, but having one display turn on is better than two. :rolleyes:
 
madog said:
The only reason the display would light up while it is asleep is if there is an application causing it to do so, or because of some input device waking it up like the mouse or remote or something.

If you use a bluetooth k/m and you have a fairly recent Intel Mac (3-4 or so years, I'm not positive) then you can use it in clamshell mode with the laptop closed but in use with the external display. It wouldn't solve the situation, but having one display turn on is better than two. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Yeah i was thinking something like that. I hate wireless peripherals so everything is straight on in but these cheap optical mice do like to hop around a bit sometimes. I get the same results with everything unplugged running straight from the off white mid 2006ish Breakbook. No apps are running other than the normal processes. Clean install of course. Only thing i can figure is that Maybe OSX is just waking on certain types of network traffic? That's the only piece left here that i can think of, i will unplug network tonight and see how it goes. Maybe a floaty track-pad? Who knows.

Thanks for the help! Clamshell mode is so annoying to me because i am so used to non Apple portables that can disable the internal display always when an external monitor is connected. Clamshell leaves me the problem that i have no way to power on, if i do shut it down, without opening it. Once you do that, your back to square one. I also worry about the type of heat this thing would build up, it gets hot as it is. I just wish i could disable the internal display fully but i know, i shouldn't have purchased a portable, but im that guy who never goes anywhere but likes to take it with me when i do.
 
I have a very similar problem with a newish iMac bought this summer. Just upgraded to Snow Leopard, and now my display won't sleep for more than a few seconds without waking up without any input from me. Very annoying when I need the computer to be on all night rendering video or something of that nature.

Someone help!
 
Just following up on this. I have found so far with a slightly different power setting (displaysleep 1 disksleep 0 sleep 0 womp 0 acwake 0 autorestart 0 lidwake 0 halfdim 0 sms 1) as well as turning off the main power to my primary display i can minimize the amount of possible light interruptions. It is very logical to just simply dim the other display as Miles suggested and there is even a handy key on my Macbook to do this but it's placement does not allow me convenient access so i must use the control panel. At this point i decide to live with it and simply dream of the day that i could leave both displays in a low power standby and simply have them only illuminate when i provide an input and use them. As long as processes open or end in the background among other things i guess im stuck?
 
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