If Mac is failing to go to sleep or is waking up unexpectedly, you can run pmset -g log | egrep '\b(Sleep|Wake|Start)\s{2,}' in terminal to inspect last sleep/wake events
In the example above there are two wake events:
-
due to HID Activity - most likely user pressed a keyboard key or moved the mouse
-
due to EC.LidOpen/UserActivity - This one is pretty obvious: the laptop lid was opened
To see what's currently preventing laptop for sleeping you can run pmset -g
The above screenshot shows three processes/components preventing sleep (addressbooksourcesync, sharingd, UserEventAgent). In practice, sleep may still be possible, but it's a good starting point troubleshooting sleep, or waking up issues.
Another useful command which shows more detailed info on processes preventing sleep is: pmset -g assertions
April 2020
macOS Catalina
