Why Your Mac Won’t Sleep: Unplugging USB Devices

Something prevented my MacOs to go in Stand-by Mode… and it was just a silly usb Joystick / Joypad!

My Macbook Air didn’t want to go sleep. Even if forcing the standby mode, after one or two seconds it just come powered back on.

I searched many website to understand how to discover what was the culprit, but nothing, here ‘s some commands to check your Mac status.

pmset -g : from terminal shows you your actual configuration, but it’s not really easy to read. i could find a line saying sleep prevented by powerd, but not really helpful.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c print com.apple.PowerManagement.plist : from terminal shows mostly the same stuff, maybe a little bit easier to read.

sudo pmset -a sleep 1 disablesleep 0 : from terminal is like operating on System Preferences (or System Settings in newer macOS) and it didn’t help.

Activity Monitor : also this didn’t help me to find what was preventing the stand by, Activity Monitor’s Energy tab on Mac should show what processes are preventing sleep, every process was on “no” status.

pmset -g assertions : on Terminal, i could find a line saying

Powerd – Prevent sleep while display is on, but powerd, or the Power Daemon, refers to different system services managing power on macOS and Linux, primarily controlling CPU frequency, sleep states, and energy saving for performance or battery life, so basically everything.

Then I just unplugged the USB joypad and everything was back to normal.

Source https://www.andreapancotti.com/wordpress/why-your-mac-wont-sleep-unplugging-usb-devices/