If you’re working on a task that requires your MacBook screen to be on all the time, you may have noticed that it goes into sleep mode or turns off after a period of inactivity.
This can disrupt your workflow. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to keep your MacBook screen on all the time. By adjusting your System Preferences > Energy Saver settings, you can prevent your MacBook from going into sleep mode or turning off the display due to inactivity. In this article, we will show you the steps to adjust these settings and keep your MacBook screen on all the time.
Change System Preferences
You can set your Mac to never go to sleep by changing the display off time in System Preferences. If you’re using a MacBook, you can change the power adapter and battery settings separately.
To change the system preferences so that it does not go to sleep, follow the steps below to change the settings.
- Click the Apple logo and select System Preferences.
- When System Preferences opens, select Energy Saver.
- Select Energy Saver in the left pane.
- In the right pane, drag the “Turn off display” slider all the way to the right and change it to “Never“.
- Check “Prevent Mac from sleeping automatically when the display is off”.
If you use applications to read and write to the hard disk intermittently, uncheck “Put hard disk to sleep when possible“.
Run Command in Terminal
Macs have a command to disable sleep. Follow the steps below to disable sleep by executing a command in Terminal on your Mac.
- Open Finder and open the Applications → Utilities folder.
- Double-click Terminal to launch it.
- Enter the following command and press Enter to execute it.
To temporarily disable sleep:
caffeinate
Sleep is disabled while running commands in the terminal. Close the terminal to return to normal.
To disable sleep completely:
sudo pmset disablesleep 1
sudo pmset disablesleep 0
Use Third Party App
You can also use third-party apps to set your Mac to never sleep. Depending on the app, you can also set it not to sleep only under certain conditions.
Here are some free third-party apps that can disable sleep on your Mac.
You can disable/enable sleep by right-clicking the Amphetamine icon in the menu bar.
You can specify the time to wake up from “Start a new session:” in the menu that appears when you click the Amphetamine icon in the menu bar. You can also disable sleep on startup of a specific app or by specifying any trigger.
Owly prevents Macs from sleeping. Owly prevents screen savers, sleep mode, and dimming on your Mac.
You can disable/enable sleep by right-clicking the Owly icon in the menu bar.
You can specify the time to wake up from “Enable for” in the menu that appears when you click the Owly icon on the menu bar.
Schedule Wake Up
You can also schedule your Mac to wake up automatically at certain times of the day. Scheduling is useful if you don’t want your Mac to sleep only at certain times of the day. To set a wake-up schedule, please follow the steps below:
- Click the Apple logo and select System Preferences.
- When System Preferences opens, select Battery or Energy Saver.
- Select Schedule in the left pane.
- Check “Start up or wake” and select “Interval” and “Time” to wake up.
- Click “Apply” at the bottom right to apply the settings.
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With the above settings, you can set a schedule to automatically wake up from sleep.
