Putting your Mac to sleep can save power and extend the life of your battery and other hardware. This article details how to put your Mac to sleep (or hibernate) quickly.
We will introduce how to quickly put it to sleep using various shortcuts and settings, so please refer to it to find the method that suits you.
Apple Menu sleep
The basic way to put your Mac to sleep is through the Apple menu in the top menu bar. To sleep from the Apple menu, follow the steps below.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen.
- Select “Sleep” from the drop-down menu.
This method is the easiest, but if you want to go to sleep more quickly, please refer to the following methods.
Sleep with Shortcut Key
Your Mac has a shortcut key to put it to sleep. To put your Mac to sleep with shortcut keys, enter one of the key combinations below.
Put your Mac to sleep:
- Press Option + Command + Media Eject key.
The power button or Ejectkey is located in the upper right of the keyboard. By entering the shortcut key above, the display will immediately go to sleep.
Note : Macs with Touch ID on the keyboard cannot be put to sleep by pressing Touch ID instead of the eject key or power button. If you have Touch ID, please refer to the following method.
Custom keyboard Shortcuts
By customizing the shortcut key, you can execute sleep from the Apple menu with the shortcut key. This method can also be used on Macs with Touch ID.
Follow the steps below to customize the keyboard shortcut that puts your Mac to sleep.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select System Preferences.
- Select Keyboard.
- Open the Shortcuts tab.
- Select App Shortcuts in the left menu.
- Click the + icon on the right.
- Make sure you select “All Applications” under Applications and enter “Sleep” for the menu title.
- Click the keyboard shortcut item field, enter any sleep shortcut key, and click “Add“.
Enter a key combination that does not overlap with other shortcut keys (Control+Command+▼.).
Once you have customized the shortcut key, you can put your Mac to sleep by entering the shortcut key you set.
Close Macbook
If you have a laptop MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, you can put it to sleep by closing the display.
However, when the MacBook is connected to an external display, it goes into clamshell mode instead of sleeping. Disconnect the external display to avoid clamshell mode.
Sleep with Power Button
If your Mac has a power button on your keyboard, you can put it to sleep by pressing the power button for 1.5 seconds and releasing it.
However, please note that holding down the power button for too long will force a shutdown.
Also, this method doesn’t work on Macs that don’t have a power button. Note that it cannot be done on keyboards with Touch ID.
Sleep from Lock Screen
You can put your Mac to sleep by pressing the Esc key on your Mac’s lock screen. This method needs to display the lock screen once, but you can quickly put it to sleep by using the keyboard.
To put your Mac to sleep on the lock screen, follow the steps below.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select Lock Screen.
If you use the keyboard, enter the shortcut key Control + Command + Q.
If your keyboard has Touch ID, you can lock the screen simply by pressing Touch ID.
- When the lock screen appears, press the Esc key on your keyboard.
You can quickly put your Mac to sleep by pressing Control + Command + Q or Touch ID followed by Esc.
Set a Hot corner
Mac implements a hot corner function that allows you to assign various operations to the corners of the screen. By assigning a sleep action to this function, you can put your Mac to sleep quickly.
To set the sleep operation for the hot corner function, follow the steps below.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select System Preferences.
- Select “Mission Control“.
- Click “Hot Corners” in the lower right corner.
- Click the select box of the corner to which you want to assign the operation and select “Sleep display“.
- Select Put Display to Sleep.
- Click OK to save your settings.
Once you’ve set the hot corner to sleep, put your Mac to sleep by moving the mouse cursor to the selected corner.
Change the sleep time setting
A sleep time is set in the Mac, and it automatically goes to sleep after a certain period of inactivity.
By shortening the sleep time, you can put the Mac to sleep earlier than the default setting. If you want to change the sleep time setting, follow the steps below.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select System Preferences.
- Select “Battery” or “Energy Saver“.
You can set the sleep time separately for when using the battery and when using the power adapter.
- Drag the “Turn off display” slider in the right pane to adjust the amount of time before sleep.
- To ensure that it sleeps, make sure the following options are turned on.
Put hard disks to sleep when possible.
Prevent your Mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off (with power adapter).
By changing the above setting, your Mac will automatically go to sleep after the set amount of time.
Terminal Shutdown command
You can also put your Mac to sleep by running certain commands in Terminal. To put your Mac to sleep with Terminal commands, follow these steps:
Tell Siri Go to Sleep
You can also use Siri dictation to quickly put your Mac to sleep. To put your Mac to sleep with Siri dictation, follow these steps:
- Click the Siri icon in the upper right corner of the screen or say Hey Siri to initiate Siri dictation.
Sleep with Touch Bar Button
If you’re using a MacBook Pro model with a Touch Bar, you can add a sleep button on the Touch Bar.
Follow the steps below to add a sleep button to your Touch Bar.
- Click the Apple logo in the upper left corner of the screen and select System Preferences.
- Select “Keyboard”.
- Click Touch Bar Settings.
- Click Customize Control Strip.
- Add the Sleep button by dragging it to the Touch Bar.
- Click Done.
You can add a sleep button to the touch bar with the above steps. Put your Mac to sleep by pressing the sleep button on the Touch Bar.
Automator Apple script
You can also create a sleep shortcut using the Automator app that comes standard on your Mac. Follow the steps below to create a sleep shortcut with the Automator app.
- Open the “Applications” folder and click on the “Run Applescript” app to launch it.
- When the document type selection screen appears, select Quick Actions and click Select.
- Find “Run Apple Script” in the list of actions and drag it to the workflow screen in the right pane.
- Enter “pmset sleepnow” in the Run Apple Shell Script text box.
- Select “File” → “Save” from the top menu.
- Enter a name for the quick action (such as Sleep) and click Save.
If you don’t use shortcut keys, you can put it to sleep by right-clicking (or Control-clicking) the Shortcuts app in the Dock and selecting Run Shortcut → Shortcut Name. You can also put it to sleep by selecting “Shortcut Name” from the “Services” menu of each app.
With the above steps, you can assign a quick action created with the Automator app to a shortcut key. When you enter the shortcut key you set, the Mac switches to sleep mode.
