My laptop’s still awake, even in sleep?Solved

Participant
Discussion
1 year ago

Okay, this has been bothering me for a while. When I put my windows 11 laptop to Sleep, it still plays music, receives notifications, and wakes up instantly when I tap a key. Isn’t sleep mode supposed to pause everything?

Replies (6)

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

Great question. What you’re seeing is not the traditional sleep mode, also known as S3. It’s a newer power model called Modern standby. In this model, your device enters a low-power S0 idle state instead of suspending completely like older systems.

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

Right. It might look like the device is asleep, but it is still quietly running in the background. Music continues to play, and apps can sync things like emails and notifications. This depends on whether the system is staying connected to the network during that time.

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

So how do I know if my laptop has this Modern Standby thing?

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

Just open Command Prompt and run the command:

powercfg /a 

If you see Standby (S0 Low Power Idle) Network Connected, then your device supports modern standby.

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

Modern standby was designed to make laptops work more like smartphones. Think about when your phone screen turns off. It is not fully off but just saving power. Music can keep playing, notifications still come in, and it wakes up instantly when you tap the screen. 
Laptops with Modern standby behave the same way. Instead of fully turning things off, the system gradually powers down unused parts. That is why it feels like your laptop wakes up instantly without having to fully restart anything.

Marked SolutionPending Review
Participant
1 year ago
Marked SolutionPending Review

That makes sense now. It is just how modern standby works.

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