Comments on: Display Sleeper Widget

By: Julia Truchsess

Julia Truchsess — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:24:03 +0000

Ah, I finally found what I needed here:

http://www.dynamicallyloaded.com/products/osx/sleepdisplay/index.html

By: Julia Truchsess

Julia Truchsess — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:12:47 +0000

Like many, many others, I’ve been looking for a way to sleep the display programmatically. Your widget does exactly what I need except that it’s a widget whose button needs to be clicked and so far I’ve been unable to generate an AppleScript or Automator action that will successfully click its button. If it was a stand-alone app that just sleeps the display when executed I could easily invoke that…

Thanks

By: chris

chris — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:20:03 +0000

Ric,
The widget is meant to put your physical display to sleep, on the iMac in particular, which doesn’t have a switch to power off just the display. When you come back to the machine and press a key or move the mouse, the display should power back on.

I’m honestly not sure what the behavior is over a remote desktop session. If you move the mouse even slightly after activating the widget, it will wake the display back up. I’d also imagine the display would wake up when you remote back into the machine.

The fact that the Dashboard is open when you remote back into the machine is by design.

By: Ric Getter

Ric Getter — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:40:01 +0000

Running 10.5.6 on a Mac Pro. It seemed like it would be a useful to to put my displays to sleep after I remote in to them via Screen Sharing from work. However, it doesn’t seem to work when launched from a screen sharing session. I clicked the button and left the screen sharing session. When I reconnected later, Dashboard was still open and the display appeared to be awake.

I’m still looking for some workarounds. AppleScript may help if I can find the key code for the Eject key (you can’t send the Ctrl-Shift-Eject Key sequence when screen sharing.

Thanks for your work, though.

Ric

By: Michael U

Michael U — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:39:04 +0000

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?

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:25:28 +0000

Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

By: LukeCro

LukeCro — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:28:46 +0000

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!

By: LukeCro

LukeCro — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:49:32 +0000

Excellent — thanks!

By: N/A

N/A — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 09:40:09 +0000

Seems to be working…Thanks!

By: chris

chris — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:09:53 +0000

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