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Do you shut down your iPads during the night?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 15 4.8%
  • No.

    Votes: 296 95.2%

  • Total voters
    311
Nope, never shut it down at night.

That would kind of defeat the purpose for me, which is to have it just sitting there ready to be used as soon as I put my hand to it.

The only time I shut down/restart is when it starts playing up and doing weird stuff, which isn't very often at all.

About the battery life - a lot of times I will leave the iPad plugged in charging overnight. So how does that affect the battery? Not at all since it's not using the battery? Anyway that's secondary for me, I'd rather take the convenience over battery longevity. Never had a battery problem with any iDevices anyway.
 
good to see the above, as i restart my IOS devices at least once a week, and always after doing lots of app updates and before i back them up to my MBPr. instinct, rather than the knowledge in the above post, leads me to believe that this resets things ... in a a sort of defrag or permissions repair way. so i don't know whether that is true, but i hardly ever have problems with them.
 
I actually joined these forums just to respond to this after seeing all the comments because I loved these answers so much.

Working in tech support, I've come to discover that the people who never reboot their devices or better yet - never shut off their devices - are always the ones to complain about the following:

Slowness
Freezing
Wifi issues
Battery life

Always. Then when you ask them the age old question "when's the last time you shut off the device or restarted it?" And they look at you like you have antlers growing from your forehead "no, why would I do that?"

The old wives tale of "using too much power to shut it down" or "wearing out the components by turning the computer on and off" is rubbish and makes no sense; as well as having no actual research to back the claim. If that was the case, you would never stop your washer and dryer, dishwasher - do you always keep your TV on?

I've shut off my original iPad every night since I got it launch day. Apple just ran a diagnostic on it last week because my mother bought it in to them (as she owns it now) and they told her the battery was at 90% capacity - the Genius was shocked for a 4 year old battery.

There's no harm in doing it - in fact you may see more benefits than you can imagine - on iOS devices, and other devices as well.

Not turning off your ipad every night is different than never restarting your ipad. I restart mine every so often, but don't turn it off at night. And I'm not keeping an ipad for four years, but my 2.5 year old ipad 3 battery is still a beast and I easily get 10 hours of use on a charge. So you go ahead and waste your time with your superstitious behavior turning it off every night. We all know better.
 
Has not Apple given any official recommendation on this matter?
 
Apple products are not meant to be shutdown. They are designed to stay always on. I have rarely restarted my MBP or iOS devices and don't remember the last time I completely shut it down.

So answer is "No".
 
I shut my stuff down once a week, other than that I just put them to sleep.

I really don't know why I shut them down...
 
When I bought it and took it out of the box it was off. When I sell it and put it back in the box I'll turn it off.
 
Working in tech support, I've come to discover that the people who never reboot their devices or better yet - never shut off their devices - are always the ones to complain about the following:

Slowness
Freezing
Wifi issues
Battery life


Rebooting when one experiences these issues is one thing. It doesn't justify shutting down your iPad every night and turning it on in the morning.

Doing this also masks the real issue: The solution isn't to just shut down your device every night, or even just rebooting when there's a problem. Those are just bandaids. The true solution is to find the app causing the issue, and either getting a patched version that fixes the problem, or finding an alternative app that does a better job at resource management.

Always. Then when you ask them the age old question "when's the last time you shut off the device or restarted it?" And they look at you like you have antlers growing from your forehead "no, why would I do that?"

This is a valid question. iOS is a mobile device OS, intended for long run times and use on limited resources. For the most part, save some memory management inefficiencies on Safari (which can be dealt with by quitting the app from time to time, if you're really having trouble), it's intended to be operational for days, weeks, months.


The old wives tale of "using too much power to shut it down" or "wearing out the components by turning the computer on and off" is rubbish and makes no sense; as well as having no actual research to back the claim.

And this is why people get bad tech support: issues of older technology are conflated with current tech, some old, outdated truths are mixed in with just plain bad advice, and then you get people who think they know it all, when they really don't.

Here's the truth: It IS correct that shut downs and startups don't induce mechanical wear. That was the case on older desktop computers with spinning disk drives. But current disk drive tech has largely resolved this, and iOS devices (and pretty much every other smartphone and tablet) don't use hard disk drives at all. They use NAND Flash, which for all intents and purposes have no moving parts. So, starting up and shutting down an iPhone doesn't wear out the components mechanically.

The startup and shutdown process DOES, however, use power. Whether it uses more power than leaving it on at night in sleep mode is debatable. Given that average annual cost to power an iPad is $1.36, it's probably safe to say that shutting down and powering up your iPad every night isn't really saving you much power or money.

The notion of regular reboots and shutdown/restarting to keep your computer fresh is a holdover from the days when Windows 95 and Windows 98 were the dominant operating systems. Win95/98 had notoriously bad memory management and their power management was deeply flawed and unreliable. Back in the late 1990s, yes, it made sense to shut down your computer when not in use because your system WOULD be more stable when fresh. But that pretty much went away when Windows XP came out, and never really has been an issue on *NIX-derived operating systems, of which iOS is one.


If that was the case, you would never stop your washer and dryer, dishwasher

Washers, dryers and dishwashers are different devices. They use hundreds, sometimes thousands of times more electricity than an iPad ever will. Washers, dryers and dishwashers also don't have a low power sleep mode state; they're either on or off. You also HAVE to turn off these devices from time to time if you want them to do their jobs, since they need to be loaded and unloaded. Most importantly, there is no point to keeping a dishwasher, washer or dryer on all the time when there's nothing to wash or dry.

By contrast: an iPad has a low power mode, uses way less power even when fully on, and there IS useful work being done when an iPad is in sleep mode: e-mail fetching, app updates, iCloud backups, and notification receipt.

- do you always keep your TV on?

Depends on the TV. Newer smart TVs have a lower power sleep mode and have apps that update in the background... in such cases it makes sense, just like an iPad, to keep it powered.

I think a more appropriate question is: Do you UNPLUG your DVR when you're not watching TV? Or how about: if you have a landline phone, do you unplug that at night?

I've shut off my original iPad every night since I got it launch day. Apple just ran a diagnostic on it last week because my mother bought it in to them (as she owns it now) and they told her the battery was at 90% capacity - the Genius was shocked for a 4 year old battery.

Great for you. Though the reality is, it's possible to shut off an iPad every night and still have the battery wear out in less than a year. What matters are battery cycles and environmental conditions. If one really taxes the CPU and resources of an iPad during the day, they could expend more load cycles on a battery than the average, even if they shut down fully at night. At the same time, a light user could maintain good battery health over time, even if they keep their iPad powered on 24/7.

Also, you must've had one heck of a fluke battery, as lithium polymer and lithium ion batteries do degrade with age, regardless of use pattern. Even with minimal load cycles, 90% capacity over 4 years is largely unheard of.


There's no harm in doing it

You're right. But there's no help in doing it, either. And you're interfering with background processes which could be done efficiently overnight while plugged in, that must now be done manually by the user when on battery and in use... which uses more battery.

- in fact you may see more benefits than you can imagine

No, there's not much to imagine here, unless you're imagining fantasy.


TL;DR: If it really helps you sleep better at night to shut down your iPad every night, go right ahead. But the reality is, it's truly no better or worse than leaving it on all the time.

----------

Has not Apple given any official recommendation on this matter?

Nope, because it doesn't matter either way. Though, it goes without saying that an iPhone is completely useless when turned off (since you know, it's supposed to receive calls and text messages and stuff). And the iPad's OS is largely modeled after the phone.
 
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That's the question.

Do you shut down your iPads during the night?

During the night I usually charge it, allowing iCloud to execute backup.

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Also never. Why would you shut it down. Likely would take more power to reboot than what it took to sleep all night.

I do reboot my iPad about once a month, just for the heck of it.

I do that every week.

----------

Is it not recommended to shut down while charging the battery?

You basically can't. When you plug in, it switches on by itself.

----------

I actually joined these forums just to respond to this after seeing all the comments because I loved these answers so much.

Working in tech support, I've come to discover that the people who never reboot their devices or better yet - never shut off their devices - are always the ones to complain about the following:

Slowness
Freezing
Wifi issues
Battery life

Always. Then when you ask them the age old question "when's the last time you shut off the device or restarted it?" And they look at you like you have antlers growing from your forehead "no, why would I do that?"

The old wives tale of "using too much power to shut it down" or "wearing out the components by turning the computer on and off" is rubbish and makes no sense; as well as having no actual research to back the claim. If that was the case, you would never stop your washer and dryer, dishwasher - do you always keep your TV on?

I've shut off my original iPad every night since I got it launch day. Apple just ran a diagnostic on it last week because my mother bought it in to them (as she owns it now) and they told her the battery was at 90% capacity - the Genius was shocked for a 4 year old battery.

There's no harm in doing it - in fact you may see more benefits than you can imagine - on iOS devices, and other devices as well.
Something about what you said is correct.
I'd suggest to shut it off once a week. But overnight is a waste of time.
 
Working in tech support, I've come to discover that the people who never reboot their devices or better yet - never shut off their devices - are always the ones to complain about the following:...

You forgot to point out that you work in WINDOWS tech support. That's completely different. Windows tech support people tell people to reboot because it usually "solves" the problem without really having to do any work.
 
Whoa ! It is an unanimous and emphatic no ! Astonishing results ! Not even one person switches off their iPad !!
 
Definitly not,

That's when it backs up to iCloud
 
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I used to, back in the iOS 4 and 5 days. More recent versions of iOS are so efficient at managing the hardware that as far as I can tell it makes no difference unless you have a rogue app running.
 
No. The iPad is not a Windoze machine.

(me being a 15 year Linux user, reboots or shut downs are oxymorons except for hardware or power issues)
 
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