Saturday, August 4, 2012

Chromebook Hack to Disable Sleep Mode

The steps in this article will prevent the screen from dimming in a short time and it will keep the WiFi alive and connected when the lid is closed thus saving you a ton of time if  you need your WiFi to survive all day.

First, switch to developer mode using the toggle switch on your device and reboot.

Second, when you see the scary warning at boot press CTRL-D.  Use CTL-D on future boots to enter the developer mode.  Note that any customization of chrome will be erased but when you log in to your account again you will get everything back since it is all in the cloud.

In developer mode: CTRL-ALT-T and enter these commands ...

crosh> shell

cronos@localhost / $ sudo initctl stop powerd

That should do it.  Sleep mode has been disabled.

2 comments:

  1. I rarely reboot my machine so the changes are essentially permanent until you reboot. If you reboot, you will have to enter the shell commands again.

    I was looking for a way to make the changes permanent but unfortunately, the chrome OS is designed to boot from a read-only file system and therefore it is not modifiable even in developer mode on the device. From what I understand, you can't modify the OS in the shell. I've tried and I've verified that it the OS is read only.

    The only way to do it is download your own copy of the chrome OS on a Linux computer, make the changes, compile the modified OS, and flash it to the SSD of your chromebook. It is possible, but it is way too much trouble for me.

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  2. Is there a way that a browser extension could send random characters or something in a way that would prevent that machine from going to sleep? I've heard a few people that just load a youtube video, and then press pause and put the tab in background. Perhaps someone could write an extension that does the same thing?

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