Annoying Mac OS feature

Michael Gartenberg | April 17, 2007, 02:32 PM

I really do like Mac OS but there's one thing driving me crazy on my Macbook. When the computer is plugged in, closing the lid puts the computer into deep sleep or hibernation. When it's not plugged in, it goes into regular sleep or suspend. That's exactly the opposite of what I want it to do. When it's plugged in, I'm likely to resume and want to get back to work as fast as I can. When it's not plugged in, I want it in deep sleep to preserve the batter. I'd love to be able to change this. I have used a Widget to force deep sleep but that's not what the way I want it to work. Any suggestions?

I also find when I come out of deep sleep my keyboard stops working and it needs to go to sleep again and wake before it works. Any ideas?

UPDATE - Eric over at virtualomni offers some insight and a suggestion that i use the command sudo pmset -b hibernatemode 5 to get my Mac to work the way that I want it to. Tried it and it sort of works. The MacBook now hibernates the way I'd like it to when it's on battery but it still goes into hibernation when it's plugged in instead of just going to sleep. I can live with it as it's closer to the way I work but it seems to me there should be a setting somewhere in the power management control that lets me adjust this the way that I want.

My other thought is that having to sudo anything to get a setting working is less than the ideal in terms of UI elegance.

My final thought is the power of readers and links. Dave Winer linked to my post and within a few minutes I had an answer. Reminds me of the days when you could post a question in a Computserve forum and get the correct answer back in minutes.

Anyone want to write a little applet that does this?