Something is waking up my iMac on El Capitan every night and i dont know what

[Benz63amg]

Hey guys, Something is waking up my iMac on El Capitan every night and i dont know what is causing it nor how to figure out, i restarted my imac thinking it may be some process running in the background but that didn't work the mac is still waking from sleep, i noticed this beaviour about 2 weeks, my mac is scedualded to go to sleep after 3 hours of inactivty but im affraid that is not working either as my imac is simply not going to sleep nor is it staying Asleep when i put it to sleep manually, when i click Sleep in the apple dropdown menu the screen goes black but i dont hear the harddrives shut off(as they should) and the imac is basically staying awake with the screen off, as soon as the press any button on my keyboard the screen instantly comes back up, i also put a hand on the back of the iMac and its not cold as it should be after a night of sleeping, it feels somewhat warm to the touch indicating the iMac was not asleep.

Thank you in advance

 

[DeltaMac]

Have you tried both SMC and NVRAM resets?

How are your external devices connected to your iMac?
Do you have a powered USB hub? Or are all external devices connected directly to your iMac and no external hubs at all?

 

[Benz63amg]

Have you tried both SMC and NVRAM resets?

How are your external devices connected to your iMac?
Do you have a powered USB hub? Or are all external devices connected directly to your iMac and no external hubs at all?

I dont have any USB device/s connected to my iMac, and i tried to unplug the computer from the outlet when i turned it off to reset the NVRAM and then turned the computer back on but the problem seems to presist

 

[DeltaMac]

OK, USB is not an issue.
How do you have your devices connected? (you did say that you were listening for your "drives" to shut off ?? )
What else is plugged in to the back, other than the power cord?
You are really looking for something that has its own power, such as a printer, or external display, or firewire device, ethernet hub/switch, etc.

NVRAM (PRAM) reset technically does not need the power disconnected. That's for the SMC reset.
Anyway...

It would be interesting to see what your power settings are. You can take a screen shot of your System Information/Power tab, which might shed some light on why your iMac does not appear to sleep completely.

What model of iMac do you have?

USB devices usually have a power, or access light when power is available from the bus. It's also another way that you can determine that your iMac is actually going to sleep. If you have a USB flash drive that has a light when plugged in, then try that, watch the light when you try to put your iMac to sleep.
That light should go out when your iMac is sleeping. On later macOS versions, it might take 30 seconds or so for that light to go out. Walk away for a couple of minutes. If the flash drive light goes out, your iMac is sleeping. If it remains lit, then no sleep. Give it 5 minutes to do that. Try other methods to trigger sleep (Apple menu/Sleep, or press control-eject (or Control-f12 if you don't have an eject key on your keyboard), you should see a shut-down menu, with the choice for Sleep.
Also, press and release the power button will usually trigger sleep on many Macs. Don't "hold" the power button, as you will force it to power off. Just press and release. That should cause sleep, assuming your iMac supports that.
Again, watch the flash drive light. If it goes out, then you are asleep (at least at that time.)

 

[Benz63amg]

OK, USB is not an issue.
How do you have your devices connected? (you did say that you were listening for your "drives" to shut off ?? )
What else is plugged in to the back, other than the power cord?
You are really looking for something that has its own power, such as a printer, or external display, or firewire device, ethernet hub/switch, etc.

NVRAM (PRAM) reset technically does not need the power disconnected. That's for the SMC reset.
Anyway...

It would be interesting to see what your power settings are. You can take a screen shot of your System Information/Power tab, which might shed some light on why your iMac does not appear to sleep completely.

What model of iMac do you have?

USB devices usually have a power, or access light when power is available from the bus. It's also another way that you can determine that your iMac is actually going to sleep. If you have a USB flash drive that has a light when plugged in, then try that, watch the light when you try to put your iMac to sleep.
That light should go out when your iMac is sleeping. On later macOS versions, it might take 30 seconds or so for that light to go out. Walk away for a couple of minutes. If the flash drive light goes out, your iMac is sleeping. If it remains lit, then no sleep. Give it 5 minutes to do that. Try other methods to trigger sleep (Apple menu/Sleep, or press control-eject (or Control-f12 if you don't have an eject key on your keyboard), you should see a shut-down menu, with the choice for Sleep.
Also, press and release the power button will usually trigger sleep on many Macs. Don't "hold" the power button, as you will force it to power off. Just press and release. That should cause sleep, assuming your iMac supports that.
Again, watch the flash drive light. If it goes out, then you are asleep (at least at that time.)

I was listening to the Hard drive within my iMac to shut off when i put the iMac to sleep from the Apple Dropdown menu (its a physical spinning harddrive that is in my iMac that makes a slight sound when it shuts off such as when putting to sleep or shutting the computer down, not an SSD), my iMac is a 2010 Model i believe,

and i have absolutely no USB devices connected to any of the USB Ports of the iMac such as USB Flash drives or USB Harddrives.

 

[MacForScience]

I believe it is still logged in 10.11. In the terminal type: syslog | grep "Wake reason"
Compare what you find with the list here.
You should be able to figure out from there what you need to do.

 

[DeltaMac]

You have more connections available than just USB.
So, my question really is: Do you have anything at all attached to any port on the back, other than the power cord.


The idea about a USB flash drive is just an idea.
If you have a flash drive that has an access light when plugged in (not all have a light), then it is another method to tell that your iMac actually goes to sleep, when the light goes out (which tells you that the USB bus is off) - OR verifies that your iMac does not go to sleep, because the access light never goes out.
You do need to wait a couple of minutes, as the sleep process is not instantaneous.

 

[Benz63amg]

You have more connections available than just USB.
So, my question really is: Do you have anything at all attached to any port on the back, other than the power cord.


The idea about a USB flash drive is just an idea.
If you have a flash drive that has an access light when plugged in (not all have a light), then it is another method to tell that your iMac actually goes to sleep, when the light goes out (which tells you that the USB bus is off) - OR verifies that your iMac does not go to sleep, because the access light never goes out.
You do need to wait a couple of minutes, as the sleep process is not instantaneous.

The only thing i have attached to the back of the iMac except the power cord is the iPhone lightning cord which is connected to the USB Port on the back

 

[DeltaMac]

So, you have your iPhone plugged in to your iMac at night, then? Anything related to that?

If you choose to shut down your iMac, does that happen without any complaints?
Again, plugging in a USB flash drive (with an activity light) will tell you when power is off the bus, and shutting off will have the same result.

It would be interesting to see what your power settings are. You can take a screen shot of your System Information/Power tab, which might shed some light on why your iMac does not appear to sleep completely, or at all.

 

[chown33]

...
It would be interesting to see what your power settings are. You can take a screen shot of your System Information/Power tab, which might shed some light on why your iMac does not appear to sleep completely, or at all.

Or paste this command into a Terminal window, then press the RETURN key.

pmset -g

A number of lines of stuff will be listed. Drag-select the complete output, copy and paste into a reply post here.

 

[Benz63amg]

So, you have your iPhone plugged in to your iMac at night, then? Anything related to that?

If you choose to shut down your iMac, does that happen without any complaints?
Again, plugging in a USB flash drive (with an activity light) will tell you when power is off the bus, and shutting off will have the same result.

It would be interesting to see what your power settings are. You can take a screen shot of your System Information/Power tab, which might shed some light on why your iMac does not appear to sleep completely, or at all.

No, i don't leave my iphone plugged in to my iMac at night. I said that i have the Lightning cord plugged in to my iMac's rear USB Port just in case i ever need to plug in my iPhone to my imac to sync or whatever, i only plug it in when i need to sync but that rarely happens, maybe once a month. the only thing that is connected to my iMac on the back except the power cord is the USB/Lightning Cord but its not connected to anything on the lightning end, the cable is just laying on my desk, it is however connected to the iMac's rear usb port but i dont think that has anything to do with my iMac not going to sleep.

here a screenshot of my power settings:

 

[DeltaMac]

Those are just a small part of your power settings, and not the relevant ones.
Use the terminal command, from chown33 post #10 to show the full list of the settings.
Command posted here again for your convenience

pmset -g

copy/paste the list to a response here. Someone will take a look, and we will see if there is anything relevant to your issue.

One thing that you CAN try, is to temporarily adjust the Computer Sleep setting for minimum time. Close that Energy Saver settings pane. Wait for that minute (or whatever)
Does your iMac automatically go to sleep then?
Does it stay asleep? Again, something with a power/access light plugged in to one of the USB ports will be quite helpful to you, showing that the power actually goes off. You need something that will clearly show you that power is off (and sleep will also power off the USB bus, thus a USB device access light can tell you a lot. (You could even plug in your iPhone, as it will stop charging when the bus turns off. )

 

[BittenApple]

do you have google chrome installed ?

its the auto updater waking the machine up to check

had the same problem

 

[Benz63amg]

do you have google chrome installed ?

its the auto updater waking the machine up to check

had the same problem

Is this something recent that google chrome introduced? yes the auto updater for chrome is enabled and has been enabled since i have become a google chrome user about 4 years ago and i never had this problem before, should i disable the chrome auto update feature?

 

[BittenApple]

Is this something recent that google chrome introduced? yes the auto updater for chrome is enabled and has been enabled since i have become a google chrome user about 4 years ago and i never had this problem before, should i disable the chrome auto update feature?

you can try and see if its your problem by disabling that component of google chrome

i did find that updating to the latest version manually also made it go away

 

[MacForScience]

Seriously save yourself some effort and check the logs. The most likely cause here, if you aren't using USB devices, is either a malfunctioning Bluetooth device, or a process that is causing your computer to wake from sleep. If you don't want to check the logs, then at least make another user account, and see if the issue continues in a clean user. If it does then the issue is either low-level OS or hardware. If it goes away, then it is a process that you have running inside of your user.

 

[Benz63amg]

Seriously save yourself some effort and check the logs. The most likely cause here, if you aren't using USB devices, is either a malfunctioning Bluetooth device, or a process that is causing your computer to wake from sleep. If you don't want to check the logs, then at least make another user account, and see if the issue continues in a clean user. If it does then the issue is either low-level OS or hardware. If it goes away, then it is a process that you have running inside of your user.

How do i check the logs without using Terminal? i am hesitant of using terminal as i have no knowledge with code and don't want to risk anything by entering code commands

 

[Filin]

In my case Bluetooth keyboard was an issue. Turn it off and found old wired keyboard. No more accidental awakening.