How to Check if Macbook Lid is closed via Terminal?

Question

I'm running OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). I was wondering if there was a terminal command to check if the macbook pro's lid is currently closed. If I used grep, what would I be looking for exactly, and where?

The reason I ask is because I have cron jobs scheduled to run every 30 minutes. However, crontab doesn't run when the computer is sleeping/hibernating. My solution was to use pmset to schedule wakes every 30 minutes. However, I need a way to put my computer back to sleep on the condition that the lid is currently closed. I don't want my computer to be awake for too long with the lid closed i.e. awake all night when I'm sleeping because that could damage the screen.

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 26 '19 at 10:53

26

ioreg -r -k AppleClamshellState -d 4 | grep AppleClamshellState  | head -1

Tested and works on 10.7.*, found here.

Update 2019-02-26:

Still works on macOS 10.14.3 Mojave

edited Feb 26 '19 at 10:53

Jørgen R

10,568
7
42
59

answered Apr 07 '13 at 22:45

Saucier

4,200
1
25
46

4

`No` means open, `Yes` means closed – Brian Low Jun 27 '17 at 04:24
1

Also works on macos 10.14! I'm checking for closed state with that: `ioreg -r -k AppleClamshellState -d 4 | grep AppleClamshellState | head -1 | grep Yes` If i printed some text - the lid is closed. And vice versa. – De_Vano Nov 08 '18 at 00:23
1

Also works on macos 10.15! – William Gustafson Nov 15 '19 at 17:21
1

`-d 1` is enough. (`-d`: Limit tree traversal to the specified depth.) – Rockallite Dec 31 '20 at 02:47
Also works on 10.15.7! – Saharsh Feb 09 '21 at 16:03
Also works on 11.2.3 – MWO May 23 '21 at 19:36
Working on Ventura (macOS 13), Apple Silicon to boot! – Truisms Hounds Jul 18 '23 at 02:31

How to Check if Macbook Lid is closed via Terminal?

1 Answers1