M1 iMac Won't Sleep When My Wife's Session Is Active

[Buadhai]

My wife and I share an M1 iMac. We are both administrators.

When my session is active, the iMac sleeps normally. When my wife's session is active, it never sleeps. When I look at Activity Monitor in her session there are four processes preventing sleep:

WindowServer
Bluetoothd
powered
nfsd

When I look at Activity Monitor in my session, no process is shown as preventing sleep.

I suppose that these services are all necessary, so killing them would not be a great idea.

How can I get the iMac to sleep when my wife's session is active?

 

[maflynn]

maybe she has a bluetooth item that is connected causing the issue? Turn off BT and see of that fixes it

Googling around, powered in the past caused problems with sleep and high cpu useage

 

[FreakinEurekan]

See if it’s an issue with sleep itself, or with sleep scheduling. If she selects Apple menu > Sleep, does the Mac go to (and stay) asleep?

If yes, reset all the sleep settings (basically go into System Settings and change time to screen saver, time to sleep, etc to “Some other value” then back where you want them. You’re essentially just re-writing the settings. I’m not at my Mac now, using my iPad, so I don’t recall the exact setting names.)

If manual Sleep doesn’t work either, then you need to figure out why - what app, etc. Try booting to Safe Mode and test it there.

 

[Buadhai]

maybe she has a bluetooth item that is connected causing the issue? Turn off BT and see of that fixes it

Googling around, powered in the past caused problems with sleep and high cpu useage

The BlueTooth devices connected with the machine are an Apple Keyboard and Mouse, AirPods, and her Apple Watch. She took her AirPods and watch with her to work yesterday, so it was only the keyboard and mouse. It still won't sleep with her account active. I need to find a wired mouse so I can disable BT just to see.

And, what if it is BT? What then do we do for a keyboard and mouse?

See if it’s an issue with sleep itself, or with sleep scheduling. If she selects Apple menu > Sleep, does the Mac go to (and stay) asleep?

If yes, reset all the sleep settings (basically go into System Settings and change time to screen saver, time to sleep, etc to “Some other value” then back where you want them. You’re essentially just re-writing the settings. I’m not at my Mac now, using my iPad, so I don’t recall the exact setting names.)

If manual Sleep doesn’t work either, then you need to figure out why - what app, etc. Try booting to Safe Mode and test it there.

I had already toggled all the sleep-related items I could find. But that seemed to have no effect.

The machine does sleep if you initiate it manually.

But it seems the failure to sleep is very inconsistent. Last night when we went to bed the screen was still on, so I just left it. When I got up this morning the machine was asleep.

I just set the screensaver for one minute and display sleep for two and it worked just fine.

Intermittent glitches like this are the hardest to solve.

 

[maflynn]

And, what if it is BT? What then do we do for a keyboard and mouse?

The first step is to identify the cause.

 

[Buadhai]

Well, I guess it's case closed. I had to go to Bangkok for a couple of days and hadn't gotten around to trying either of the above suggestions. When I got back home the M1 iMac was sleeping on schedule, as it should.

I guess I'll never know what caused the glitch, or what fixed it.