MacBooks (including the MacBook Pro) have no option, if you want to use ‘standby mode’ or ‘hibernation mode’ if you close the lid or activate the ‘sleep’ mode in the Apple menu. It usually uses the standby mode, keeping the memory content active in memory and still consumes battery. I realized, that the contents of the memory though will be written to the hard disk. On a MBP I started to exit the battery after the MBP went to sleep. The system was then in the hibernation mode, known from Windows Laptops or Linux Laptops. My new MB (the small one) has the battery fixly built-in, the battery cannot be exited that fast. So I was looking for a new solution.
I’ve found two quite nice solutions for that, on software side. Since the Intel MB/P are using usual ACPI schemes, this should be no problem at all.
Sven Andersson got a nice small utility which puts the MB/P to hibernate upon your request. This utility can be found here.
Second one I found here:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1
This sets the MB/P to hibernate, if you close the lid. You can ‘automate’ this a bit, if you define aliases for these actions, since this have to be set after every reboot. Put those aliases in a bashrc or bash_profile file and source the file after you open the Terminal:
alias hibernateon='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1'
alias hibernateoff='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0'