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Put Your Mac to Sleep Now!
Posted 02/02/2009 at 10:52:14am | by Scott Rose

screen shot of Expose and spaces of options
Active Screen Corners can put your display to sleep, but not your Mac.

Is there a way to put my Mac to sleep with a series of keystrokes, instead of going to the Apple menu and selecting Sleep? 

Absolutely! For a quick-sleep keyboard shortcut, hold down Command-Option-Eject for two seconds. If you’re looking for a keyboard shortcut to put all displays—but not your Mac itself—to sleep, press Control-Shift-Eject. To get that handy Restart/Sleep/Shut Down/Cancel dialog (the same one you got by pressing the Power button on older Mac keyboards), just press Control-Eject.

It’s also possible to put your display (not your whole Mac) to sleep in an instant whenever you drag your mouse cursor to one corner of the screen. Go to System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Exposé, and set one of the Active Screen Corners to Sleep Display. 

 

COMMENTS
avatarO_O

That was put way to happy and cheerful... it made my eyes bleed...

Aside from that, very helpful to know those commands, hopefully I remember them.

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avatarCreating a 1-button full Sleep shortcut is easy....

In OS 10.5 open System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse, then click the Keyboard Shortcuts tab (you'll be creating a new one).  Scroll all the way to the bottom of the list of Keyboard Shortcuts, then click the + button to bring up the dialog to create a new Shortcut, select All Applications in the Applications drop-down menu, then type the word 'Sleep' in the Menu Title field (the brilliant Mac OS recognizes the word 'Sleep' and knows what it means! Does Vista?), then click once in the empty Keyboard Shortcut field and press whatever key or key combination you want to assign to this new shortcut.  It's as easy as that!  I chose the F3 button on my iMac (because it wasn't already assigned), and fn+F3 on my new unibody MacBook (because F3 alone was already assigned to Expose).  Works like a charm.  FYI, if you've got one or more unassigned keys on your keyboard you can use it/them to create application-specific Shortcut(s) for ALL your important apps.  Just follow the above procedure, but select whichever app you want to use it for in the Applications drop-down menu.

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