CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macoscocoapower-managementiokit
Peter Hosey
Peter Hosey

Reputation: 96373

Preventing screen dim and display sleep on OS X

I'm making an app for OS X 10.7 and later that plays video. Any document can be taken full-screen using the standard full-screen commands.

I'd like to forestall the automatic screen dim and display sleep as long as any document in my app is playing.

Ideally, the end (or pausing) of all playing videos should commence the full display sleep timer—a 3-minute display sleep delay shouldn't run out 1 minute and 37 seconds after the last video ends simply because something was checking or disrupting the timer every 3 minutes.

I also don't want to disable display sleep outright. If my program crashes or is force quit or the power goes out, the user's display sleep settings should remain untouched.

What's the best way to ensure that playback is not considered “idle”, but that once playback finishes, display sleep after idle works correctly?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 535

Answers (1)

user1720115
user1720115

Reputation:

Take a power assertion during playback with IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(), and release it when done. Power assertions handle unexpected process termination correctly:

Assertions should be released with IOPMAssertionRelease. However, even if not properly released, assertions will be automatically released when the process exits, dies, or crashes. A crashed process will not prevent idle sleep indefinitely.

Upvotes: 4

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