If you have a Mac with a HDD, the hard disk and CD-ROM drive may sleep if the Mac has been idle for quite some time. And finally, make sure the computer is plugged into a power outlet.Īnother option to consider is that it might be in safe sleep, in which case you’ll need to press the power button to wake it up. If your computer doesn’t return to full operation within a few seconds, you should check the following: first (and obviously) make sure your Mac is actually powered on, as the battery could have been drained have a look at screen brightness and adjust it check that the external display (if applicable) is turned on. Check This First If Wake Time Is Too Slow When your Mac exits standby, the system is restored to its pre-standby state when that sleepimage file is copied back from the hard drive to RAM. This file is generally the same size as the amount of physical RAM your machine has under the hood. Mac standby and sleep work by dumping everything in active RAM into a file called ‘sleepimage’. Safe sleep ensures that data stored in the main memory of your Mac isn't lost when the computer shuts down due to its battery being completely drained. Standby mode extends how long a laptop can stay in deep sleep on battery power, which could be as long as 30 days. During this deep sleep mode, the state of the user’s session is copied to the SSD and macOS turns off some hardware systems, such as RAM and USB buses. These Macs enter standby after being in sleep mode for three hours, while earlier models enter standby after just an hour of sleep. Standby mode is limited to Macs that start up from an internal flash drive. macOS will also turn off some of its hardware systems to save power. Standby saves the user’s current session – open applications, files and windows – on their hard drive. Some computers enter special sleep modes called standby and safe sleep, helping them conserve even more energy. Things change when you leave a Mac idle for a long time. You may already be familiar with the ‘short term’ energy-saver settings in macOS: which switches off the display and puts the hard disk(s) to sleep after a short period of inactivity.

What Happens When You Leave Macs Idle for a Longer Period of Time? Do you get the feeling that your Mac is really slow to wake up from sleep mode? Do you see a black screen for a few seconds instead of the login screen after opening your MacBook’s lid and you don’t know why? Well, you’ve come to the right place, since we’ll explain why your Mac is slow to wake up and how this relates to Apple’s energy saving features built into macOS.

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