MacOS/How To/Keep a Mac Awake with the Lid Closed

• How To Keep a Mac Awake with the Lid Closed

  • Overview

    • Keep a MacBook running with its lid closed, for example while a render or an agent session finishes, then put lid-close sleep back the way it was.
    • The switch is the pmset setting disablesleep. CaffeinateCLI holds off idle sleep but does not keep the Mac awake through a lid close.

  • Prerequisites

    • The pmset:lid-awake:* tasks from Person/codekiln/GitHub/dotfiles, applied with chezmoi apply. They were added in codekiln/dotfiles#173 Keep the Mac awake with the lid closed and restore it.
    • An admin account, for the one sudo prompt in step 1.

  • Steps

    • 1. Allow the switch without a password

      • If you want to skip the password prompt, install the sudoers rule once. It covers only pmset -a disablesleep 1 and pmset -a disablesleep 0 for your user.
      • sh

        mise run pmset:lid-awake:install-sudoers

      • If you skip this step, each switch asks for your password, or for Touch ID if pam_tid.so is enabled in /etc/pam.d/sudo_local.

    • 2. Turn lid-close sleep off

      • sh

        mise run pmset:lid-awake:enable

      • The task records the current SleepDisabled value before changing it.

    • 3. Close the lid

      • The Mac keeps running on battery too, so keep it out of a closed bag and away from blankets.

    • 4. Put lid-close sleep back

      • sh

        mise run pmset:lid-awake:restore

      • Restore writes back the value recorded in step 2. With no record it turns sleep back on.

  • Troubleshooting

    • To check the current state, run pmset -g | grep SleepDisabled. 1 means the Mac stays awake with the lid closed.
    • If the Mac still sleeps when the lid closes, run pmset -g and look for SleepDisabled 1. If it reads 0, run step 2 again.
    • If install-sudoers says there is no TTY, run it in a terminal yourself. It needs to ask for your password once.
    • To return to a password prompt on every switch, run mise run pmset:lid-awake:install-sudoers --remove.