Knowledge Base :: VNC Viewer cannot wake a Mac when it goes to sleep

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VNC Viewer cannot wake a Mac when it goes to sleep

This article applies to the following product(s):

VNC
VNC Enterprise Edition

A connected VNC Viewer user cannot automatically wake a Mac computer from deep sleep. See the section at the bottom for more information.

A VNC Viewer user may be able to wake a Mac computer from display sleep (the lower of the two options in the System Preferences > Energy Saver pane). Consider the following matrix:

	VNC Enterprise Edition 4.6.x	VNC 5.x
OS X 10.6 or earlier	Can wake	Can wake
OS X 10.7	4.6.3 required	Can wake
OS X 10.7.4	Cannot wake	Can wake
OS X 10.8	Cannot wake	5.0.2 required

Waking a Mac computer from deep sleep

Prior intervention is required before a connected VNC Viewer user can wake a Mac computer from the following deep sleep modes:

Computer sleep (aka hibernate)
Hard disk sleep option (default is 10 minutes but can be calibrated using pmset command)

To wake up from deep sleep, you need some external "kick" i.e. "Wake on Ethernet network access" needs to be checked:

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) magic packet
Wake-on-demand via Bonjour Sleep Proxy (available with Apple's AirPort Express router products)

To wake up a 10.7 Mac without a display connected, you might need to disable "Lower Power Wake" kernel boot option to ensure the Mac is fully powered up when it receives a WOL packet (see darkwake=0 boot option).