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riggidy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 30, 2013
18
0
Mountain Lion 10.8.3
I want my MBP to go to sleep when I close the lid, even when an external monitor is connected.
Can anybody help me set this up?

Thanks
 
Mountain Lion 10.8.3
I want my MBP to go to sleep when I close the lid, even when an external monitor is connected.
Can anybody help me set this up?

Thanks

Put the mac to sleep with a mouse and keyboard through the monitor.
It is not possible to sleep a MBP when the lid is closed because of clamshell mode.
 
Unplug the charger and the keyboard and mouse if you have one.

My MBP stays awake if I close it with a monitor connected even if the only thing plugged into it is the charger (no mouse and keyboard). Very irritating bug.
 
It is not a bug, they designed it that way. The thinking is that most want clamshell mode when shutting the lid with a monitor connected to the display port. For the rest of us there is just one extra step, select sleep from the apple menu before closing the lid. If you are bothered by that extra step, connect your monitor to the HDMI port. It will then sleep when you close the lid.

It would be nice to have a control panel to set what to do when the lid is closed.
 
It is not a bug, they designed it that way. The thinking is that most want clamshell mode when shutting the lid with a monitor connected to the display port. For the rest of us there is just one extra step, select sleep from the apple menu before closing the lid. If you are bothered by that extra step, connect your monitor to the HDMI port. It will then sleep when you close the lid.

It would be nice to have a control panel to set what to do when the lid is closed.

If they really did design it that way I want to know why. It makes sense if the computer has a mouse and keyboard plugged in, but if it refuses to sleep just because it's charging that to me is an irritating bug with no practical use whatsoever. If Apple thinks this is a "feature" they should at least give us a way to turn this nuisance off.
 
Just unplug the charger.

That doesn't work for 10.8 and rMBP. My rMBP will just go into clamshell mode.

Unplugging the monitor (or turning it off) works however.

----------

If they really did design it that way I want to know why.

They had to choose what class of user was going to be optimized and which class was going to get an extra step or two.

When the software engineers were sitting around the table they decided that 90% of the users want clamshell mode when they close the lid with a monitor connected. Those that don't want clamshell will have to live with an extra step (turn off or disconnect the monitor first). Pretty simple they thought, but I guess they did not realize how annoyed 0dev would be that his/her needs were not placed above all others :)

Now this is a area where perhaps windoze machines have an advantage. Windoze includes a control panel to select what should be done when the lid is closed (can be different for battery or powered). It is a PITA to find and figure out, but there. Perhaps MS has a patent on the feature and won't let Apple use it..... I wonder if there is an app for it, there are several clever utilities about, like those that dismount external drives upon sleep so you can grab an run in the AM and not get that annoying disk was not put away correctly notice. The same utility searches for connected drives and remounts them when the laptop wakes.
 
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They had to choose what class of user was going to be optimized and which class was going to get an extra step or two.

When the software engineers were sitting around the table they decided that 90% of the users want clamshell mode when they close the lid with a monitor connected. Those that don't want clamshell will have to live with an extra step (turn off or disconnect the monitor first). Pretty simple they thought, but I guess they did not realize how annoyed 0dev would be that his/her needs were not placed above all others :)

Now this is a area where perhaps windoze machines have an advantage. Windoze includes a control panel to select what should be done when the lid is closed (can be different for battery or powered). It is a PITA to find and figure out, but there. Perhaps MS has a patent on the feature and won't let Apple use it..... I wonder if there is an app for it, there are several clever utilities about, like those that dismount external drives upon sleep so you can grab an run in the AM and not get that annoying disk was not put away correctly notice. The same utility searches for connected drives and remounts them when the laptop wakes.

But why would they think this? If there is no keyboard or mouse plugged into the laptop, putting it in clamshell mode provides no utility whatsoever. And I'm willing to bet the majority of customers close the laptop because they want it to go to sleep. That's why I classify it as a bug.

And like I said, even if they do somehow think it's useful to inconvenience their users, they should give me a setting to turn it off. If even Microsoft saw fit to give the user a choice why not Apple? Aren't Macs supposed to "just work"?
 
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Have you not heard of Bluetooth? I use the wireless keyboard and trackpad. Nothing plugged other than video and power. I wouldn't want the computer to sleep.
 
Have you not heard of Bluetooth? I use the wireless keyboard and trackpad. Nothing plugged other than video and power. I wouldn't want the computer to sleep.

But the same thing applies, the system should detect if bluetooth is connected to a wireless keyboard and mouse and if not it should just go to sleep. My bluetooth is turned off completely most of the time.
 
No one really thought that users might want to watch a movie on an external monitor while being able to close the lid? No need to have any external mouse or keyboard connected for that.
 
No one really thought that users might want to watch a movie on an external monitor while being able to close the lid? No need to have any external mouse or keyboard connected for that.

If I have a film in full screen and close the lid while the charger's plugged in it just glitches everything up in my experience. And then when I go to use the computer again the desktop is messed up too.

When I watch a film and don't want to use the laptop at the same time (usually I do because I play the film on the second monitor and use the laptop's monitor to check emails and browse) I just keep put the screen down so it's almost closed specifically because I don't want it to go into shell mode or whatever it's called and mess everything up.
 
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