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Nigel Goodman

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 29, 2017
171
84
UK
I have a strange issue that for convenience I have called Sleep and Deep Sleep.

My iMac running Catalina is always on and has the Emby server running providing streaming to an Apple TV.

When I have finished using the iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) I just walk away and the display will turn off after 10 minutes and the machine will sleep later.

Most of the times when I start streaming from the ATV the iMac will wake and do what it's supposed to do, but on occasion the iMac will just not wake up. This is what I call the Deep Sleep. No fixed timings for this but a couple of times a month probably. I have to walk upstairs and manually wake the machine and log in to ensure it stays awake for a decent time. The computer has not crashed or has any other problem. It's just that WOL does not work in this state. I've tried other WOL apps running on my iPhone to wake but they don't work either.

I've turned on the setting 'Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off' in Energy Saver preferences but it doesn't make any difference. This is supposed to stop the computer sleeping - which I don't really want - but it still sometimes goes into the Deep Sleep.

I don't think this is just a Catalina issue as it happened in earlier OSs as well.
 
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