Display Sleeper Widget
Platform: Apple OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Current Version: 1.0
Description
The Display Sleeper Widget is an OS X Dashboard widget that will instantly put your display to sleep. This is useful for iMac owners in particular, because the iMac lacks a button to turn off the display which is really annoying if your iMac is in your bedroom. Leopard added the ability to make a hot corner sleep the display, but I found that using this I would unintentionally turn off my display.
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Note: This widget only works in OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If you need a display sleeper plugin for 10.4 (Tiger), check out this Sleep Display Dashboard widget by Line Street Widgetry.
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14 comments so far
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Hi Chris,
That looks like a useful widget - thanks for posting about it on my blog.
I find I’m always unintentionally triggering hot corners, so I expect your widget will be useful to me when I (finally) upgrade to Leopard…
Cheers,
Matt
Hello,
I have a MBP with a external Screen. Is it also possible und send just the MBP-Display into sleep, while the external monitor is still on?
Cheers, Ben
Ben,
Unfortunately, it’s not currently possible to sleep only one display.
Awesome! Finally I can go to sleep without having to wait for my monitor to turn off by itself.
Thanks!
Thank you for creating and posting this widget!
Thank you, this is really what I was looking for!
It doesn’t work right
I have Leopard and it doesn’t work in my imac, when i turning of the display, 5 seconds later wake up, also the hot corners do the same.
sorry, I’m from México my english is not good
thanks anyway… keep searching another way
Alfred,
I’m pretty sure the widget uses the same API as the hot corner (and ctrl-shift-eject), so it makes sense that you’re seeing the same behavior with the widget.
Do you have any background programs that might be waking the display? I remember reading in some forums that people running dvd-encoding software couldn’t put their display to sleep. See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1323073
Seems to be working…Thanks!
Excellent — thanks!
Need to turn off your iMac monitor but keep your computer running? Frustrated that the screen-brightness buttons on your iMac keyboard only seem to let you turn the brightness up and down a moderate amount, blocking you from turning the back-light way way down? Want darkness fast, without having to wait for your screen saver to cycle through and Display Sleep to start automatically later on?
Sure, using the regular Apple-menu Sleep option will turn your display off for you instantly, and it saves power — but it’s not always the best option since, in addition to putting your display to sleep, normal Sleep mode also powers down your hard drive, temporarily interrupting any running software, downloading, DVD ripping, music-playing, etc., that you might be in the middle of. And for some reason the Apple menu doesn’t offer a basic Sleep Display option alongside its Sleep, Restart, and Shut Down options
Luckily, there ARE three ways to turn off the display on an iMac without putting the entire computer to sleep:
1) Hold down on Control-Shift-Eject on your keyboard and your display will sleep instantly while your programs will keep running (or click Command-Shift-Eject to go into full Sleep mode, which powers down any software you’re running, as described above). If you can remember shortcut key-combos like this, then this is a great option, just be careful to use Control-Shift-Eject and not Command-Shift-Eject at the wrong time (e.g., in the middle of an important download or DVD or CD rip — a full Sleep can corrupt the process, while Display Sleep will let everything continue A-OK).
2) Go to your System Preferences and click on Expose and then choose “Sleep Display” as one of your “Active Screen Corners.” From then on, you can Sleep your display fast, any time. However, although this is convenient, “Sleep Display” might not be something you want to waste one of your four Active Corners on (I know I don’t).
3) Use a program or widget like the free ChrisKarcher.net “Display Sleeper Widget.” Of all the programs and widgets I’ve tested out for this so far, Chris Karcher’s “Display Sleeper Widget” is the most convenient — super-easy to install, extremely easy to use, doesn’t eat up system resources or clutter your Applications folder, and it only takes up a tiny bit of room on your iMac Dashboard. A must have!
Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
It’s a great widget, i am looking for a simple app to do this, or a unix command/applescript. I’d like to be able to hit my “away” button and have all my machines display turn off. So i can just use an AppleScript to open the app, but the widget requires a click.
Any way to get the terminal code or an apple script equivalent?