Disabling the Sleep command in the Apple menu

After recently participating in a discussion about disabling the Sleep command in the Apple menu, I wanted to document how to do this. This may be most useful for Mac terminal services, which was the context where I learned how to do this.

1. Log in with an account that has admin privileges

2. Open Terminal and run the following command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement SystemPowerSettings -dict SleepDisabled -bool YES

3. You should see that the Sleep command is now grayed-out in the Apple menu.

To revert back, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Log in with an account that has admin privileges

2. Open Terminal and run the following command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement SystemPowerSettings -dict SleepDisabled -bool NO

3. Restart the Mac (this is necessary to apply the change.)

After the restart, you should see that the Sleep command is available again in the Apple menu.