Understanding Sleep is very important if you're using a MacBook in particular because Sleep
mode is going to save battery power.
So when you're not plugged in having your Mac Sleep as much as possible when you're
not using it is very important.
So let's start by looking at System Preferences here.
Under Energy Saver you've got your Settings.
You have two different sets here: Battery and Power Adapter.
The one you want to be most concerned about is when you're on Battery.
You can see there is not set time to go to sleep.
You don't even see the word here in this slider.
It used to be you would see a sleep time here or maybe two.
Like one for display and one for putting the entire computer to sleep.
Sleep has several different stages in Mac OS Sierra.
The main one is to turn the display off.
That uses a lot of battery power.
It has to light that whole thing up.
So having it set to turn off the display after a certain amount of time, maybe just a few
minutes with not using your computer, is very important.
It's going to save a lot of battery power.
With the display off all you need to do is tap the space bar and it comes back on instantly.
It's very easy to continue working even if you're writing and you're pausing to think
it is very easy to have your screen just go off, save some battery power while you're
thinking, hit the space bar and continue typing.
You also have this check box here, Put Hard Disk to Sleep When Possible.
This makes sense for it not to send power to the hard drive if you aren't using it then.
So it will kind of do it in a smart way.
It doesn't take long for a hard drive to start up again.
Just a fraction of a second.
So you won't even notice this if you keep it on but it will save a lot of power.
Also have the screen dim here.
A lot of power saving options here.
But basically having the screen go off after two minutes of nonuse is not going to actually
put your Mac completely to sleep.
But it will save a lot of battery power.
There are other ways that you can do this.
One way is to tap the power button on your MacBook and just by pressing it you should
be putting your Mac to sleep by default.
You can also go to the Apple menu here and go to Sleep and that puts it to sleep very
quickly.
You can also set a hotspot.
This is what I do.
So I'm going to go to the main System Preference area.
I'm going to go into Mission Control and use Hot Corners.
At Hot Corners I can set the bottom right corner to put the display to sleep.
So that means that any time I move my cursor all the way down to the bottom right it goes
to sleep right away.
I love this because if I'm getting up from my Mac or I'm thinking about something I don't
have to find a keyboard shortcut by looking at the keyboard or anything.
I just swipe diagonally down to the right on my trackpad and the display will go to
sleep.
It's very useful.
So what about if you have a new Touch Bar Mac.
Well if you have a Touch Bar Mac you can customize the Touch Bar, the control strip, by going
to System Preferences, Keyboard, Customize Control Strip.
We can drag a Sleep button down into the Touch Bar.
So I'm going to replace this one here with a Sleep button.
I'm going to hit Done.
Now my Touch Bar has got the Sleep button in it.
So I put my Mac to sleep instantly by just touching that button right there.
Of course there's a standard keyboard shortcut if you use Control, not Command but Control,
shift and either the Power button on your MacBook or the Eject button if you have an
older MacBook that has an eject button instead of a power button.
That will instantly put your Mac to sleep.
The easiest way, the simplest way, the most straightforward way to put your MacBook to
sleep, of course, is simply to close the lid.