The new WhatsApp Web client is a welcome companion to the hugely popular WhatsApp Messenger cross-platform mobile application. It allows users to link their browser to their WhatsApp account and interact with chat sessions just like you do in the mobile app.

So far so good, but I have encountered one significant drawback. If you run the web client in a Google Chrome session on Mac OS X then a kernel assertion is established which prevents the system from sleeping, regardless of energy saver system preferences.

With the WhatsApp Web client running:

$ /usr/bin/pmset -g assertions
2015-01-29 17:47:11 +0000 
Assertion status system-wide:
 BackgroundTask 0
 ApplePushServiceTask 0
 UserIsActive 0
 PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep 0
 PreventSystemSleep 0
 ExternalMedia 0
 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep 1
 NetworkClientActive 0
Listed by owning process:
 pid 346(coreaudiod): [0x0006336d00011046] 00:00:50 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.context532.preventuseridlesleep" 
 Created for PID: 12006.

With the WhatsApp Web session closed:

$ /usr/bin/pmset -g assertions
2015-01-29 17:47:23 +0000 
Assertion status system-wide:
 BackgroundTask 0
 ApplePushServiceTask 0
 UserIsActive 0
 PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep 0
 PreventSystemSleep 0
 ExternalMedia 0
 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep 0
 NetworkClientActive 0

I assume that this sleep issue is related to the notification feature of WhatsApp Web, since the assertion references Mac OS X’s coreaudiod process. Turning off desktop alerts and sounds in the client settings does not fix it however, so for the moment it doesn’t seem possible to prevent this system insomnia from occurring.

I shall contact WhatsApp product support and see what they can do.