Put OS X to sleep via command-line

When connecting to an OS X box via SSH, you may want to put it to sleep after you’re done.

This is no system call to put the computer to sleep that I know of. However, Applescript can do it, and it is trivial to call the OSAScript interpreter in bash.

The following script puts the computer to sleep:

#!/bin/bash

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to sleep'

Edit: found a better way!

I don’t know if this is specific to Snow Leopard, but the following command will work as well without having to use Applescript or administrator rights:

pmset sleepnow

13 thoughts on “Put OS X to sleep via command-line”

    1. Hey, that’s neat! I didn’t know that option was in shutdown at all. :)

      I like the fact that Applescript doesn’t require to be superuser, but using the system’s “shutdown” command might be more appealing to some people. Thanks for the tip!

  1. with -h you halt and -r reboot
    instead of now you can specify a time
    visudo allow to grant users access to sudo commands
    without be a sudouser
    for example if you add :

    %users ALL=/sbin/shutdown
    then every users can use shutdown from everywhere

    %admin ALL=/sbin/shutdown
    grant to admin

    me localhost=/sbin/shutdown
    grant to user me from localhost

  2. Looks like I found the solution. For instance:
    sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1 force
    pmset sleepnow

    Parameter force changes settings without saving it on to the disk. So, next time hibernatemode will be the previous one.

  3. note that if you are remotely logged in, it won’t sleep with this or any command.

    To see the reason it won’t sleep run
    pmset -g assertions

    then look if NetworkClientActive is “1” (or any of the other reasons).

    so to do it remotely you could do
    nohup /bin/sh -c ‘/bin/sleep 10 && pmset sleepnow’ &
    then logout inside 10 seconds.

    1. Actually, if you exit your remote session immediately it will. E.g. This just worked for me via ssh:

      pmset sleepnow && exit

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