How do I turn off display when inactive on an M1 Imac?

[Marty_Macfly]

Hi All,

Upgraded to Sonoma on my trusty M1 Imac


I've noticed since that the screen does not go off, and stays on for hours, regardless of the settings I put in for the screen saver, E.g. the below settings I have tried. I've changed to a static screen for the login page, no good either. I though the moving screensaver could have been keeping the screen active, and therefor left on.


Hope you can advise.

 

[Bigwaff]

Try setting screensaver to start before screen set to inactive. Flip the minutes settings between the two.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Try setting screensaver to start before screen set to inactive. Flip the minutes settings between the two.

Nope that did not work

Will try taking the big clock off the Lock Screen - perhaps the minute changes keeps the screen active!

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Taking the big clock off the Lock Screen - Did NOT work either



This is driving me nuts.

We leave the iMac on all day. Its not good to have the screen on all the time - when only use every few hours our so.



Hope you guys can help!

 

[ab22]

I have these settings, and screen goes off, despite pmset being used to disable sleep. Perhaps check activity monitor - energy to see if some process is preventing sleep for you.

 

[Marty_Macfly]

I have these settings, and screen goes off, despite pmset being used to disable sleep. Perhaps check activity monitor - energy to see if some process is preventing sleep for you.
View attachment 2419164

Hi Ab,

Do you have a motion screensaver?

Both my laptop turns off the screen ok, its only the iMac that does not

 

[Marty_Macfly]

Well, Sonoma 14.7 is out now.

Will update and see if that fixes this annoying issue

 

[ab22]

Hi Ab,

Do you have a motion screensaver?

Both my laptop turns off the screen ok, its only the iMac that does not

I have ' Ventura' screensaver enabled, but never see it due the other settings shown above. Does your activity monitor - energy show anything preventing sleep ?.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I use a hot corner option in macOS in Desktop & Dock settings. One of the choices it offers is "Put Display to Sleep."

So when I'm ready for a black screen, I move the mouse pointer to that corner and screen goes black. This seemed best option for iMacs that I used for more than a decade.

You may be looking to make that automatic instead of taking that manual action, but this will definitely work every time.

The other common approach is to create a black, blank image at the resolution you use, save it, choose it as your screen saver image and then let the screen saver automatically activate. That's not putting it fully to sleep but telling the display to display an all black image.

 

[Bigwaff]

You could always try Sleep Aid to determine what's keeping your Mac awake...

Sleep Aid - View a Mac's sleeping habits, solve issues, improve battery life, stop sniffers

Sleep Aid is designed to reveal details on how a Mac sleeps. This is useful to see what's going on, and to help troubleshoot why a Mac won't go to sleep (even with lid closed), or why it keeps waking in the middle of the night. Sleep Aid includes many Apple sleep settings, as well as some...

ohanaware.com

 

[Marty_Macfly]

I have ' Ventura' screensaver enabled, but never see it due the other settings shown above. Does your activity monitor - energy show anything preventing sleep ?.

Hi Ab,

The OS update fixed the issue

I didn't get a chance to try activity monitor - will bear in mind for n=next time goes nuts

thanks for the help!

 

[Marty_Macfly]

I use a hot corner option in macOS in Desktop & Dock settings. One of the choices it offers is "Put Display to Sleep."

View attachment 2419248​

So when I'm ready for a black screen, I move the mouse pointer to that corner and screen goes black. This seemed best option for iMacs that I used for more than a decade.

You may be looking to make that automatic instead of taking that manual action, but this will definitely work every time.

The other common approach is to create a black, blank image at the resolution you use, save it, choose it as your screen saver image and then let the screen saver automatically activate. That's not putting it fully to sleep but telling the display to display an all black image.

Thanks!

Great idea - I've set it and it works.

Will use next time iMac goes nuts with this