Comment by ryandrake
2 days ago
I didn't realize any rando app could prevent the entire system from sleeping. Shouldn't this power be gated behind a user-controllable permission? I assume the developer needs to at least use an entitlement to call whatever API does this...?
Any website and app can do it. Zoom / Google Meet / YouTube / Bandcamp / Spotify already does this. I don't think it needs to be hidden behind walls. Maybe a user override can be added.
In Linux, KDE's power manager PowerDevil shows if something is blocking device or display sleep for example. I don't think it's hard to add an indicator in macOS, too.
Visibility isn't the problem. As OP mentioned, you can go into Activity Monitor to easily see what application is doing this. The user just doesn't seem to have any control over it or any way to stop a particular application from doing it.
I find something, presumably a Safari tab, blocking sleep regularly and not actually showing up in activity monitor.
Why is this not an opt-in thing? Heck, why can’t I turn it off? I can could the number of tabs that I want to allow to function when “sleeping” on zero fingers.
It's buried too deep. Clicking on battery and seeing a line saying "There are apps preventing sleep >" and hovering on it to see a list is way better than digging activity monitor.
Another option might be another section for apps preventing sleep, like power hungry applications.
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MacOS has a "apps using significant battery" thing that is quite useful. I think here there's a similar argument for an in your face thing.
That way when the battery goes from 60% to 30% you get told about it, instead of when you go from 30% to 5% and then have other problems as well.
Not so certain about the actual knowability here though
In KDE, user can also override this.
Yes, you can. I forgot to add that, thanks.
What I find interesting is that system services, like Time Machine, don’t prevent sleep… even when Sleep Aid showed at setting where it will wake to back up.
About half the time when I wake my MBP there is a notification waiting for me about Time Machine failing to finish because the system went to sleep. My TM drive is a SSD connected with USB-C. First initial backup took maybe 3-5 minutes. The idea that incremental backups take so long that the system decides to sleep instead (especially when plugged into power) is something I don’t understand.
Now that I’m typing this, I wonder if I have a different issue going on. I moved the drive so it’s plugged into my display. The display powers my laptop and acts as a USB hub. I wonder if the monitor going to sleep is killing power to the drive… but I’d expect an improper ejection notice if that was the case.
I have a similar issue with Time Machine backups. I’ll plug in wall power and a USB drive, do `caffeinate -u -t 7200` or so - and still Time Machine often fails to complete.
Until recently a rando app could prevent a Mac from shutting down or logging out. I think it was changed in Sonoma.
> Shouldn't this power be gated behind a user-controllable permission?
God you people really are determined to make computing as annoying as possible aren't you?
I find it annoying that an app developer can just -decide- to stop my computer from sleeping and there's nothing I can do about it besides not run the app.
I haven't seen this hill before. What's the problem with permissions?