Why does my Mac mini wake up every few minutes?

Question

Why does my Mac mini wake up every few minutes?

I have a problem with my Mac Mini. At night, I put the Mac in sleep mode, but every 4-5 minutes, the connected peripherals wake up, only to go back to sleep after a few minutes. I have an SSD connected to the USB port, and it keeps turning on and off because the Mac repeatedly suspends and reactivates it. In the morning, when I wake up, the SSD is very hot as it has spent the entire night turning on and off due to the Mac. Is there a way to put the peripherals to sleep without them being reactivated every 5 minutes? This doesn’t seem like normal behavior.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Mac mini

Posted on Nov 7, 2024 9:48 PM

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Answer 1

hcsitas

Level 6

12,902 points

Nov 8, 2024 3:01 AM in response to stefanosicchiero

Sleep is unnecessary on later Macs and should be disabled. Shut for long absences/idle overnights (i.e. do not manual-sleep), and for regular operation, use the settings exactly as shown below (reboot after changes), should fix.

Additionally, avoid manual sleeping your Mac and use the Lock Screen settings to switch the display off on timer:

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Answer 2

Nov 9, 2024 3:31 AM in response to stefanosicchiero

Just switch the **** thing off at night and on again when needed the next day. The mini is quite quick to boot up from cold.

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