"Wake" Macbook while in clamshell mode

[Moose Cadets]

Would it be possible if I had my mac closed and plugged in to a display to be woken up by a host computer? Or will the sleep effects of the Mac not allow Synergy to pass through the host computer's input.

[Kelvin Tran]

The sleep effects of the Mac would disallow Synergy from passing through the host computer's input and the reason for this is because in sleep mode, the operating system will actually shut down critical parts of the TCP/IP protocol stack (the networking protocols) that are crucial for Synergy to operate in a normal state.

The process for ensuring that a Mac does not sleep on lid close, unlike Windows, will most likely require specialized software.

[firedo]

macOS doesn't support the standard Wake-on-LAN packets. But you can go into System Preferences > Energy Saver > check the box for "Wake for network access".

My old MacBook Pro 2014 (running MacOS 10.9 - 10.11) was woken from sleep by just opening an 'Screen sharing' (VNC) session (for ex. Terminal: open vnc://10.0.0.100) ). But this was using Ethernet cable and "Screen sharing" was enabled in System Preferences > Sharing. I discovered this accidentally since when I manually slept the computer, I was wondering that why was the re-connection successful without waking the computer.

I don't know if this works anymore for the newer models without the integrated LAN port. WiFi wake-up probably won't work since it would need to be connected always.

And I wouldn't hold my breath for this feature to be added to Synergy, since it's so niche case and most people wouldn't probably like their computers to be awakened suddenly.

You can probably do a quick shortcut for waking that computer with the VNC command or by opening some other kind of connection.