On my Windows 11 laptop, Dorico being prevents the OS from going to sleep. Not just automatic sleep after X minutes, but even when I actively try to put it to sleep, it refuses.
This has bitten me twice before I realized Dorico was the culprit, resulting in a dead battery and a blazing hot laptop in my bag. 
Hi Dan, with me this does not happen. Do you just close the lid or do you put it to sleep via Start > Power > Sleep? And in the Windows settings, what is your power plan?
I have the same issue on my Win10 desktop.
No other app causes it, only Dorico.
Hi Ulf, the power settings are set correctly. It doesnāt matter whether I close the lid, press the power button, or let it sit for the selected number of minutesā¦ it wonāt go to sleep if Dorico is launched.
When Dorico is totally closed out, it goes to sleep as expected.
Iām only raising this because I recall other users saying Dorico 4 finally allows their machines to sleep automatically, but for me it doesnāt.
Dorico wonāt allow your machine to sleep automatically, e.g. after the machine is āidleā for a period of time, because the audio engineās high-priority thread(s) means that the machine is never idle.
But you should be able to make your computer go to sleep by explicitly commanding it to do so. If it doesnāt, chances are, itās some kind of audio device driver issue.
I was about to create my own post about this, when I saw this.
I donāt know what the technical options are, but Iām pretty sure that a threadās priority can be changed. Your explanation sounds suspect. For example, if I run a YouTube video in a browser window, neither the computer nor the display goes off until I pause the videoāthen it shuts off after the idle time expires, because the people who write browsers figured out how to handle this kind of thing. I have other programs that use audio and I havenāt seen them exhibit the same problems. I simply canāt believe that Dorico is the only program that I run that uses a high-priority audio thread.
Dorico doesnāt just prevent my computer from sleepingāit prevents my display screens from turning off.
Note that the issue exists even if only the Steinberg Hub is running. As far as I know, the Hub doesnāt need to play audio.
When I walk away from my computer, I donāt always know if it will be a few minutes or a few hours. If Dorico is running, I need to decide. And because the Hub appears a few seconds after I exit a score file, I sometimes come back to the computer with both displays blazing away because I walked away and forgot to fully exit Dorico.
Yes, I could manually put the computer to sleepābut then, Iām pretty sure you could fix the problem on your end if you really wanted to.
If you use File > Exit, you can close both the program and Hub together. Letting the computer sleep while a program is running is always a risk. Nothing bad may happen, but it can.
I always do a save if I have any unsaved work before I step away. Actually, my motto is save early and save often. The risk of data loss from sleeping is negligible. Iāve been doing this routinely for years with a range of programs and no problems.
Doricoās audio engine inherited that property from Cubase which needs it for unattended long time audio recordings. Therefore it is hard coded into the engine.
Of course, we can switch this off, but since Cubase and Doricoās audio engine share a lot of code, it is not that easy. It is in our backlog to make this configurable but we have had no time, yet, to implement it. So yes, the Dorico userās voice is heard, but still has to wait unfortunately.
This is a much better explanation than Danielāsānot that his explanation is incorrect, just incomplete.
Thanks.
I would think Cubase users would have the same complaint. Could you make the Cubase engineers do the work? 
I think Cubase users would be outraged if they start a recording, play in the best solo they ever did and then realizing that it is suddenly cut off because the computer went to sleep.
And yes, it is the idea to let the āCubase engineersā do the work, but they are also busy with other Cubase specific tasksā¦
Things may be different now, but putting a music computer to sleep was always a no no
Well, I bet itāll go straight to the top of the list now! 
I wasnāt thinking one would use a stupid algorithm to do this. You donāt allow sleeping when you shouldnāt (in the middle of a recording). You allow it when you should (when thereās been no activity in a whileārecording is an āactivityā). You donāt rely on the OS.
Netflix has the same problem. Users would be outraged if they started watching a movie, only to have the computer enter sleep mode in the middle. At the same time, users might also be outraged if they paused their movie and walked away for a few hours, only to find that their the pause image had been burning away on the screen. So they made it work well in both situations.
Again, it depends on how itās managed. Relying on the OS is where I think a lot of the problems come from. It can be intelligently managed (see Netflix example above).
Finally, it still remains a userās decision. On Windows, you can set your computer to never sleep if you feel you canāt risk it.
Great! Perhaps I didnāt state it the best way, but Danielās comment was along the lines of āit canāt be doneāāI should have just said, āyes it canā.
??? LCD/LED screens donāt burn as far as i know
OLEDs do.
ā¦ and I would have replied - hold on.
Even in my limited configuration, there is quite a bit more to it with real time (or near real time) audio devices plus other software than either of your Netflix and Browser examples. To keep my Audio Interface, a S/PIDF pre, two Midi keyboards, a Buffalo Drive, VEP, Sonarworks, SMPTE lock, Focusrite control, etc. reasonable happy, and avoid a cascading failure because some piece of hardware/software canāt get what it needs at some instantā¦
I wonāt argue with choice and having different needs - but I absolutely know my visibility into the issues are naive compared to the Steinberg team.
Fair enough. But Iām not sure that, for example, keeping the computer from idling will prevent a disk drive from sleeping. You prevent a disk drive from sleeping by telling the OS not to let it sleep (or simply keeping it busy). Most hardware stays running if the OS doesnāt sleep. Hard drives and displays and a few other things often have their own sleep code. I was surprised that Dorico doesnāt just keep the computer onāit keeps the screen on.
Iām pretty sure my external MIDI keyboard is not going to sleep no matter how my OS is set upāand if it did, Iām not sure the OS could prevent it (not without some active keep-MIDI-awake code which Iāve never heard ofābut then, Iāve never heard of MIDI devices sleeping).
We donāt all work in the same environments. On my tablet PC, I have two power configurationsāone for when I work with REAPER (my DAW) and am performing music and one for the rest of the time. For me, most of Doricoās composition features donāt require that it be permanently running any more than my word processor does. I agree that it shouldnāt shut down during a long recording, nor while playing. I canāt think of any other times when it would be necessary to keep it running despite my sleep setting (which I could always set to ānever sleepā).
Iām not asking anyone to let their computers sleep. Iād just prefer it wasnāt enforced on everyone. Keeping the display on is particularly irritating.
I donāt mean to be glib, but thereās always the old option to simply quit Dorico when you arenāt using itā¦ solves your problem right away. I use lots of heavy programs that I quit when they arenāt my active focus, because I donāt want them to be resource hogs nor to corrupt an open file over the course of multiple sleep/wake cycles. Just close dorico.