How Can You Change Sleep Mode for Mac

Changing the Sleep Mode on Macs

Apple supports three main types of sleep modes for the Apple Mac. The modes are: Sleep; also known as Hibernate Mode 0, Hibernation; Hibernate Mode 1, and Safe Sleep, or Hibernate Mode 3. Each of these three Sleep modes works slightly differently. How can you find out which mode your portable uses? How do you change to a different mode if it’s not on the setting you want?

You can find out which sleep mode your Mac is using by opening the Terminal application. It is located in the Applications/Utilities Section. When the Terminal window opens, enter the following at the prompt: pmset -g | grep hibernatemode. Now you’ll see one of the following words: hibernate mode 0, hibernate mode 1 or hibernate mode 3. Hibernate Mode 0 is the default for desktops. Hibernate Mode 1 defines Hibernation mode and is the default for older Macs. Hibernated 3 means safe sleep, which is the default for portables made after 2005.

You can change the sleep mode, but experts don’t advise it for pre-2005 Mac portables. When a user tries to force an unsupported sleep mode, this action may cause the portable to lose data while sleeping. Even worse, your portable might not wake up at all. If this happens, you’ll have to remove the battery to restart and then reinstall the operating system. If your portable doesn’t support Safe Sleep, you should choose hibernating instead of attempting to get a quicker wakeup from standard sleep mode.

You can still try and change the mode however, even if your Apple Mac is a pre-2005 portable. To do this, you should use the following command: sudo pmset -a hibernate mode X. Just replace X with the number 0, 1, or 3, depending on which sleep mode you prefer. You will need to enter your administrator password in order to complete the changes.