

Modern versions of macOS automatically sleep your computer when the display turns off. Why do my VPN connections disconnect when my screen turns off? If this concerns you, Modern Standby's Network Connectivity can be disabled by going to Power & Sleep Settings, and setting the 'disconnect from the network' option under Network connection to Always. This prevents network leaks in most cases.

On Windows, if Modern Standby is detected, Viscosity will keep your connection alive as long as possible while in Modern Standby. If this concerns you Power Nap can be disabled by going to System Preferences->Energy Saver and unticking the "Enable Power Nap" checkbox if it is ticked. When these features are enabled your computer will wake up periodically so it can check for email, sync with iCloud and OneDrive, and perform a few other limited activities. The one slight exception to this is macOS's Power Nap and Windows Modern Standby features. Applications are not executed, and network interfaces like Ethernet and Wi-Fi are turned off. When your computer is sleeping it is effectively off. Sleep and Standby Frequently Asked Questions Can other applications use the network while the computer is sleeping? This prevents scenarios where the VPN connection on your computer may think it's active, but the VPN server has terminated the connection due to inactivity, which results in a non-functional VPN connection.Īnswers to further common sleep-related questions can be found below.

Therefore Viscosity will gracefully disconnect your VPN connections just before your computer sleeps, and reconnect them when it wakes up. This allows it to consume very little power while not in use, but almost instantly boot back up and pick up where it was last left before sleep.Īs the processor and network interfaces are all turned off, it is not possible to keep a VPN connection active.

While sleeping a computer draws a small amount of power to keep its memory state (RAM) active, while cutting power to the processor, storage, network interfaces, etc. Rather than having to completely shut-down the computer to save power when not in use, sleep offers an alternative that puts the computer in a low power state instead. All modern computers include "sleep" functionality (often called "hibernation" on Windows).
