OS X Mavericks: If your computer screen goes black
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If your screen goes black, and then comes back on when you press a key or click the mouse or trackpad button, your Mac or display has gone to sleep. To save energy, your Mac and display go to sleep automatically when the Mac isn’t being used.
You can set your Mac and display to sleep at different times. Because the display wakes up faster than the rest of the Mac, you should set it to go to sleep before the Mac.
On some Mac computers, you can select options to reduce the brightness of the display before it goes to sleep and keep the display dimmed when the Mac is running on battery power.
- Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Energy Saver.
- Drag the slider that controls sleep for the display in the Battery pane or the Power Adapter pane.
- If your Mac has these options, select “Automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep” in the Battery pane, then select “Slightly dim the display when using this power source” to keep your display dimmed while using your battery.
To wake your Mac and your display from sleep, press any key on the keyboard or click the mouse or trackpad button.
Last Modified: Oct 20, 2015