Get your MacBook to sleep smart
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I've been meaning to blog about SmartSleep ever since I discovered it early this year.
I almost never shutdown my MacBook Pro, I always send it to sleep. Faster wake up time, this behaviour makes sense on a laptop. Only, it can take ages for the MacBook to actually go to sleep. Check how long it takes between the moment you close the lip, and the power led start pulsing. Ages.
This is because your are not only sending your computer to sleep, but into hibernation too, which is the default behaviour. Sleep is fast, it is the hibernation which takes time as it is saving the MacBook's state on disk. So how can we change that? This is where SmartSleep kicks in.
SmartSleep is a preference pane that dynamically sets the sleep state of your machine.
SmartSleep let’s you select each select sleep state. Additionaly the new SmartSleep state lets your notebook just sleep while the battery has a high level. If the battery level drops below a certain point (default is less then 20% or 20 minutes) it will switch to sleep and hibernate. So you have the best of both worlds.
This preference pane runs flawlessly, to a point you forget it's installed - until you start working on a MacBook that doesn't have it.
A must have if you own a MacBook.
Comments and responses
11 Mar 2009
Hey David, thank you for the tip! I just installed it on my MBP… Hope it will help me save my battery…
11 Mar 2009
@Yannis I’m not sure it’ll save battery, but your MBP should go to sleep much faster when you close the screen ;)
30 Sep 2009
Installing SmartSleep on my Dell Mini 9 (10.5.8) fixed its sleep problem :)
05 Oct 2009
How does Smartsleep react to a situation when you close your Mac at say 22% battery power and let it closed for a weekend? Is it that smart to wake up and hibernate, or does the battery run out of power?
I’m just considerig an install. Thanks!
09 Oct 2009
@grj I’m not sure, I need to test a border case such as the one you mention.
Try contacting the author, he might have an answer?