There are situations we encounter on a daily basis where the Mac is not supposed to go into hibernation if possible. But there is a way to force your Mac to pull an all-nighter for you…if you need it. We’ll show you how to keep your Mac from sleeping, dimming or showing a screensaver.
How to Keep your Mac Up
Keeping your Mac from hibernating comes in handy when uploading large files to Teamplace, exporting big projects from iMovie etc., or having a daydream while staring at a blank page (the list goes on).
What helps is caffeine for the Mac. This metaphorical cup of coffee comes in the form of an app with a very fitting name: Caffeine. Once it is installed you can have your Mac stay awake for a set period of time. Despite lacking a few updates to match the most recent design changes, Caffeine works on every Mac OS operating system and is available free of charge in the app store. The app adds a little coffee cup icon to your menu bar which allows you to activate or deactivate the sleep mode of your computer. You can also set the time period it should stay awake for.
How to Send your Mac to Sleep Quickly
Another useful feature are the “Hot Corners”. They pretty much do the opposite to the Caffeine app, allowing you to put your Mac into sleep mode in one move. In “System Preferences” – “Desktop & Screen Saver” you can find the option “hot corners”. Here you can select commands that are activated when you move the cursor into one of the corners of your screen. One option is “Start Screen Saver” and it switches immediately to your screensaver. Now you can put your Mac to sleep when you leave for your own coffee break.