screen saver & energy saver will not work all of a sudden

Hello Cartsort1,

Thanks for posting in the Apple Support Communities.

Let's confirm the Screen Saver preferences enabled to see if any adjustments may clear this up. If you haven't tested with Hot Corners yet, see if that will activate the Screen Saver. Use the steps below, and you can learn more information here: Change Screen Saver preferences on Mac - Apple Support

To change these preferences, choose Apple menu  > System Preferences, click Desktop & Screen Saver , then click Screen Saver.

Show screen saver after

Choose how long your Mac can be inactive before the screen saver starts. If you don’t want to use a screen saver, deselect the checkbox.

A warning symbol indicates if your display is set to turn off (as specified in Energy Saver preferences or Battery preferences) before the screen saver starts.

Hot Corners

Start or stop the screen saver when you move the pointer to a screen corner. See Use hot corners.

Click the pop-up menu for a corner, then choose Start Screen Saver or Disable Screen Saver.

To use a modifier with the hot corner, press and hold the Command, Shift, Option, or Control key, or a combination of these keys, while viewing the pop-up menus.

In addition, be sure to quit all of your apps to see if there may be a specific app that is running in the background preventing this. For assistance with quitting apps on your Mac, check out this resource: Quit apps on Mac - Apple Support

Let us know what you find.

Have a great day!

Cartsort1 wrote:

Thank you @steve626

Sorry for the delay in checking things out.

Thank you for the clear instructions for checking the Users & groups.

According to my

activity Monitor there is nothing related to zoom running in the background.

When I checked the Users & Groups Zoom is listed but not checked.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/28ef41a0-3c86-49fd-934e-97e9a468019b

above is a screen shot.

The issue is still happening on both of my desktop computers.

Thank you for your help

That screenshot shows that ZoomOpener is starting up automatically. I don't know if that is the cause of the problem but it might be. You might try uninstalling Zoom completely (with a Zoom uninstaller) and also make sure that ZoomOpener is no longer in the login items. Then see if the issue is resolved.

You mentioned the checkbox -- that only has to do with "hiding" the program if it is checked, the fact that the program is listed there means it is starting automatically and running.

If uninstalling Zoom resolves the issue, you can reinstall it but be careful to not allow the installer to set it up to automatically start. Or after re-installing it, go to Zoom Preferences and look for a way to prevent that.

One more thing: what is that ESET Cybersecurity Pro program, it is also running at login. What do you need that for? The MacOS, especially Monterey, has rock solid security. Sometimes programs like that do things in the background and prevent normal MacOS functions like sleep, etc.

Confirmed for me too - exact same issue with my 2021 iMac running OS 12.5.1... out of nowhere, both stopped working. New machine, clean install when purchased (no time machine backups used). Cannot find source issue, nothing works in Prefs with any settings or restore defaults, etc.

I can't believe we're the only users experiencing this issue.

Screensaver and Sleep modes don't stop working out of the blue. I've done nothing outside the norm, with the only application change/addition is Microsoft Teams for video conference calls about a month ago. My 2021 iMac was intentionally set up as very clean install to keep thing like this to a n absolute minimum, and can't think of anything I've changed or done different to my normal daily use.

Perhaps this is the issue? Microsoft Teams causing some conflict?

Updating to Monterey 12.6 did nothing in regards to this issue.

Lastly, I can only manually put the machine to sleep. Wake from sleep functions per normal. Nothing I change or alter in System Prefs fixes the problem.

rinaldi20 wrote:

I've done nothing outside the norm, with the only application change/addition is Microsoft Teams for video conference calls about a month ago.

Perhaps this is the issue? Microsoft Teams causing some conflict?

It could be MS-Teams (or a similar program like Webex or Zoom). These programs are usually configured to prevent sleeping when in use since no one wants to get disconnected from an online session.

Do you have anything relating to Teams running in the background? Have you restarted in Safe Mode and then restarted normally and rechecked to see if the problem persists?

Go to About This Mac => System Report => Installations -- look for all installs around the date that the problem was first noticed.

Adobe Acrobat DC should be fine, that should not cause what you are experiencing. I would not uninstall it, it is a useful program to have. I have it and don't have this problem.

Could Zoom (or some part of it) be running in the background? Does Activity Monitor show anything related to Zoom? Can you check System Preferences => Users and Groups and see if you have anything in Login Items that might be active in the background?

Thanks for trying, Cartsort1.

If you didn't see any improvement with those last steps, you may need to Contact Apple for support and service.

Hope that helps.