Encountered this on Reddit today. Crazy.
If you have an older MacBook or MacBook Pro, try this (make sure you have a current backup first):
– Fire up your Mac
– Take your AirPods case and place it under your MacBook, on the left side, about halfway down
– Your Mac will go to sleep
Basically, this is how the Mac detects that the lid is closed. Which is why it goes to sleep and, when you remove the magnet, it wakes back up.
I verified this with my 2015 MacBook Pro. Did not work with my 2018 MacBook Pro, though I suspect I just haven’t hit the right sweet spot.
Of course, I wouldn’t do this experiment without making sure you have a current backup, just cause magnets and magnetic media.
This used to happen with me on a work PC laptop with my Milanese Loop. I’d rest my wrist in just the wrong spot and the magnet would trip off the lid detection. I thought the laptop was faulty for a while.
If the MacBook is meant to go to sleep by magnets, why would you have to worry about a different magnet affecting it negatively? Also, what magnetic media is in any recent MacBook?
You’re holding it wrong.
(For what it’s worth, I still think “you’re holding it wrong” is a perfectly valid response to someone intentionally death clawing a device just so).
Yeah, but how many Loop readers, specifically have HDDs at this point?
I think it’s just ingrained in us to not trust magnets near computers for so long, that it automatically triggers in our mind. 🙂
Good note on the room keys, though.
Well, he does say ‘2015’.
But modern laptop rotary drives aren’t nearly as sensitive as floppies from the mid-80s, so I still wouldn’t worry.
(And if you have a four year old laptop drive, well, you better already have backups if your data matters.)
I think he was referring to the MacBooks with HDDs instead of SDDs. Either will go to sleep doing this. This certainly explains whey I keep erasing room keys when I put them in the pocket with my AirPods
Same with my MacBook (though I’m not sure if it was the AIr or the Pro). Just reaching across for the ports was enough to put the laptop to sleep if I got “lucky.”
File under, “Doctor, it hurts when I do…this.”
Better not close the lid on that MacBook Pro, then, since it’s the magnets in there that are the normal sleep triggers….seriously, this will not affect the data on your computer at all.
I have some magnets from some old 10K server-grade SCSI drives. They’ll hold half a ream of paper on the fridge. they used to be INSIDE those drives, without any sort of data los, so I’m gonna say there is NO CHANCE of this happening.
Yes, and the MacBook Pro has been SSD-only since the first retina machine in 2012. The MacBook Air has been SSD-only since 2010. And finally, the last MacBook with a spinning hard drive was released in 2010.
So, my point was that you would have to have a seriously old machine for this to even possibly be an issue. We’re talking about 7-9 year old machines.
EXACTLY!