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Is it possible play music through iTunes even when I put the computer to sleep? I don't need the monitor on when playing the music so I have been going to the Apple menu and choosing Sleep but the music stops playing.

Is it possible to just turn off the monitor?

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4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

As other people here have said, sleep suspends the computer and (that's why you hear the fans and drives turn off — it's using very little power), nothing can keep running.

If you are running Leopard or later, you can press ctrlshift to turn off the display.

I've also put together a couple of tiny applications that you can use to turn your screen off.

  1. Zeez sits in your menu bar
  2. sleepscreen is a command line executable (so you can call it from scripts and in other creative ways)

Both of those were put together a while ago for my own amusement, so don't expect much (but do tell me if they're broken for you).

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It's because "Sleep" is not the same as "Turn off LCD". :)

The proper definition of "sleep" on a computer is that all processes and hardware stops, and the machine maintains a sleep mode that supplies power only to RAM to hold the memory content.

If you just want to turn off the LCD, press the darken screen key (F5) till the screen turns off.

EDIT what a klutz - it's F1 instead (small sun symbol) to darken the screen. F5 is to darken the keyboard backlighting.

Also, you can always set under Energy Saver > Display Sleep to be at 1 minute or so.

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F1 for me :)... –  alex Oct 3 '09 at 19:54
That is incredibly cheap. It's only a kidney in my country's curency :) –  alex Oct 3 '09 at 20:17
Only a kidney in Romania? In Singapore, it's a kidney + our firstborn. –  caliban Oct 3 '09 at 20:18
Firstborns are overrated anyway :) –  alex Oct 3 '09 at 20:22
That's why I cut down on my sugar, got a vasectomy, and bought an MBP. –  caliban Oct 3 '09 at 20:31
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The whole PC goes to sleep, not just the monitor. The hard drive turns off, wireless turns off, everything; this makes it impossible to play any music.

To only turn off the screen turn the brightness all the way down; the lowest level will turn the backlight off (at least that's what happens on a 2007 MacBook).

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Press ctrl+shift+eject to turn off your Mac’s display without making it sleep.

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