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Power and Sleep Settings

How to change when your computer sleeps, turns off the screen, or what happens when you close the lid

Your computer is set to sleep after a period of inactivity by default. That's fine most of the time, but it gets in the way during presentations, long downloads, or when you're reading something and your screen keeps going dark. Here's how to adjust sleep timing, screen timeout, and lid behavior on each platform.

Change when the display turns off:

  1. Open System Settings
  2. Click Lock Screen in the sidebar
  3. Adjust Turn display off on battery when inactive and Turn display off on power adapter when inactive
  4. Pick a time from the dropdown, or select Never to keep the screen on indefinitely

Prevent the Mac from sleeping (even when the display is off):

  1. Open System Settings
  2. Click Energy in the sidebar (on laptops, this may be called Battery)
  3. On laptops, click Options at the bottom right
  4. Turn on Prevent automatic sleeping on power adapter when the display is off

Change lid close behavior:

macOS does not have a setting to change what happens when you close the lid. Closing the lid always puts the laptop to sleep. If you need it to stay awake with the lid closed, connect an external display, keyboard, and mouse. The Mac will stay awake in clamshell mode automatically.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does leaving my computer on instead of sleeping damage it?▾

No. Modern computers are designed to run continuously. Sleep saves energy and reduces wear on fans and mechanical drives, but skipping sleep occasionally for downloads or presentations is perfectly fine. If you're on a laptop, keeping it awake on battery will drain the battery faster.

What is the difference between sleep and hibernate?▾

Sleep keeps your session in memory and uses a small amount of power to maintain it. Your computer wakes up almost instantly. Hibernate saves your session to disk and powers off completely, using zero power. Waking from hibernate takes longer, similar to a fresh boot, but your open apps and files are restored. macOS handles this automatically. On Windows, hibernate is available as an option in the power settings.

Why does my laptop sleep when I close the lid?▾

That is the default behavior on every operating system. On Windows, you can change it in the Power Options settings described above. On macOS, the only way to keep it awake with the lid closed is to connect an external display, keyboard, and mouse (clamshell mode). On Linux with GNOME, the setting is not available in the graphical interface by default, but KDE Plasma includes it in Power Management.

My screen keeps turning off during presentations. How do I stop it?▾

Set the screen timeout to Never before your presentation. On Mac, go to System Settings > Lock Screen and change the display timeout. On Windows, go to Settings > System > Power & battery > Screen and sleep and set screen off to Never. Remember to change it back afterward to save power.