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How Long Does it Take to Boot Your MacBook Pro?

PROFESS0R

PROFESS0R

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 30, 2017
363
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Hi All,

This thread follows on the tail of another thread where someone was complaining about the boot time of their MacBook Pro. So... if you have a stopwatch, how about you note the time in seconds that it takes for your MacBook Pro to boot.

I'll start:

Computer: 2019 MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz i9 8-core, 32Gb Memory, 4Tb SSD, Vega 20 Graphics

With four external monitors connected:

52 Seconds

With no external monitors connected:

37 Seconds

Joe
 
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Given how 'boot' works in macOS with FileVault it's not immediately clear to me what time you're recording but anyway, this is what I got:

10 seconds from power button, to login screen.
30 seconds from hitting enter (on login screen) to desktop.

This is a stock 2018 MBP15 - i7 6-core 2.2Ghz, 16GB, 250GB SSD.

casperes1996 said:
I realise they can be shut down and rebooted, but my average uptime is about a month
Click to expand...

This is a valid point though. Even my Mac mini hardly ever reboots - it's probably been turned off more often because the power is out longer than the UPS will handle, than because of deliberate reboots.
 
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I will have to check at some other time. Mine has been on since I first opened the lid and it self-booted.
I don't turn any of my computers off. I have about 50 + that stay on all of the time.
 
I have the same model as yours. Filevault disabled, secure boot enabled, around 30 - 40 sec. Wonder why macos boots so much slower than w10.
 
Wow! I have an almost brand new (less than a month) 2019 MacBook Pro 15", 251GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, 2.6 GHz i7 CPU and Radeon 555X Pro GPU. Mine takes 24 seconds to boot up, and I thought that was slow. I expected better from (my first ever) Mac. The reason: my son has his Windows 10 machine booting in 6 seconds flat! Does anyone know how to speed up the boot time for a MacBook Pro?
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Stephen.R said:
Given how 'boot' works in macOS with FileVault it's not immediately clear to me what time you're recording but anyway, this is what I got:

10 seconds from power button, to login screen.
30 seconds from hitting enter (on login screen) to desktop.

This is a stock 2018 MBP15 - i7 6-core 2.2Ghz, 16GB, 250GB SSD.



This is a valid point though. Even my Mac mini hardly ever reboots - it's probably been turned off more often because the power is out longer than the UPS will handle, than because of deliberate reboots.
Click to expand...

Wow Stephen, how did you get boot time down to 10 seconds. BTW, my time from hitting Enter to Desktop is only a few seconds.
 
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Steve.T said:
Wow! I have an almost brand new (less than a month) 2019 MacBook Pro 15", 251GB SSD, 16 GB RAM, 2.6 GHz i7 CPU and Radeon 555X Pro GPU. Mine takes 24 seconds to boot up, and I thought that was slow. I expected better from (my first ever) Mac. The reason: my son has his Windows 10 machine booting in 6 seconds flat! Does anyone know how to speed up the boot time for a MacBook Pro?
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Wow Stephen, how did you get boot time down to 10 seconds. BTW, my time from hitting Enter to Desktop is only a few seconds.
Click to expand...
... Im not sure? I didn't *do* anything specific. Note that the 10 seconds is just boot to auth - it has FileVault enabled, so the HDD is still encrypted at the initial login screen, and thus a heap of stuff hasn't loaded - hence the 'second' timing (from login to desktop) is 3x as long - it's not just loading my account, it's loading a heap of the system too.

I just noticed the last sentence of your post. So that's the difference - I'd imagine you don't have FileVault enabled, and thus it's loading all of the OS before the login screen shows, and then once you login it's just your account that's loading.
 
Stephen.R said:
... Im not sure? I didn't *do* anything specific. Note that the 10 seconds is just boot to auth - it has FileVault enabled, so the HDD is still encrypted at the initial login screen, and thus a heap of stuff hasn't loaded - hence the 'second' timing (from login to desktop) is 3x as long - it's not just loading my account, it's loading a heap of the system too.

I just noticed the last sentence of your post. So that's the difference - I'd imagine you don't have FileVault enabled, and thus it's loading all of the OS before the login screen shows, and then once you login it's just your account that's loading.
Click to expand...
I don't get it though, your boot time from power on to the desktop screen is insanely fast compared to what others are reporting, what is it so different about your system that enables you to boot in 10 seconds whilst other are booting in 40+ seconds?

I have the MacBook Pro 15 you see in my signature on order and I'm interested to know what to expect with such a configuration.
 
Ultra Male said:
I don't get it though, your boot time from power on to the desktop screen is insanely fast compared to what others are reporting, what is it so different about your system that enables you to boot in 10 seconds whilst other are booting in 40+ seconds?

I have the MacBook Pro 15 you see in my signature on order and I'm interested to know what to expect with such a configuration.
Click to expand...
You misunderstand. 10 seconds is time to login screen for mine. Then it’s a further 30 seconds once I hit enter at the login screen - so about the same 40 seconds, but I see the login screen much earlier because it has to get a password to allow it to decrypt the SSD and continue booting.
 
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Stephen.R said:
... Im not sure? I didn't *do* anything specific. Note that the 10 seconds is just boot to auth - it has FileVault enabled, so the HDD is still encrypted at the initial login screen, and thus a heap of stuff hasn't loaded - hence the 'second' timing (from login to desktop) is 3x as long - it's not just loading my account, it's loading a heap of the system too.

I just noticed the last sentence of your post. So that's the difference - I'd imagine you don't have FileVault enabled, and thus it's loading all of the OS before the login screen shows, and then once you login it's just your account that's loading.
Click to expand...
OK, Stephen, I think I understand. I don't have FileVault enabled, so while my boot time is much slower than yours, I get the desktop in 2 to 3 seconds from logging in. And when I just put my MBP to sleep, it takes only 2 seconds to wake up. I have read many suggestions to just put the system to sleep, rather than shutting down and re-booting. I don't really think that I need FileVault, so I'll go without. Thanks for your speedy reply. Things are starting to make some sense to a Mac novice now :)
 
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Further to my last, I have just tested the sleep mode, and the system wakes up almost instantaneously. I closed the MBP, and when I opened it again, by the time it was open and ready to go (less than 1 second), it was up and running, ready for me to start where I left off. I'm fairly happy with that.
 
Steve.T said:
Further to my last, I have just tested the sleep mode, and the system wakes up almost instantaneously. I closed the MBP, and when I opened it again, by the time it was open and ready to go (less than 1 second), it was up and running, ready for me to start where I left off. I'm fairly happy with that.
Click to expand...
any downsides to this? does it put any added strain on the hardware? Say for instance, one is about to go to bed, wouldn't it make more sense to shutdown rather than sleep to not waste anything or does it cause 0 harm on the long run?
 
I’ve had Mac laptops since about 2007, I’ve never shut them down overnight like that. If travelling, sure. My current MBP15 doesn’t get daily use, it’s usually asleep for weeks at a time.
 
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Ultra Male said:
any downsides to this? does it put any added strain on the hardware? Say for instance, one is about to go to bed, wouldn't it make more sense to shutdown rather than sleep to not waste anything or does it cause 0 harm on the long run?
Click to expand...
Hi Ultra Male, the only downside in sleeping the MBP instead of shutting it down is that it uses battery power while "sleeping", and it seems to use no battery power once shut down. I tried this over the last couple of days. I put it to sleep with seven applications open, and over a 10 hour period it used 5% battery power. I put it to sleep with no applications open, and it used 2% battery power over the 10 hour period. Your mileage may differ. I suppose that as long as I have access to charge the battery after waking it up, no problem. But after reading some stuff about battery use and abuse, it makes sense that discharging the battery down to 20%, and that charging it up to 80% before taking it off the charger seems a good stewardship of your equipment. I can't find the link to the article right now, and the guy that wrote it seemed to get a lot of flack about his article, but I think he's on the money. What he suggest is that discharging the battery (almost) all the way and then charging it to 100%, and then doing that over and over again does a lot of damage to the battery. I hope this helps.
 
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Steve.T said:
Hi Ultra Male, the only downside in sleeping the MBP instead of shutting it down is that it uses battery power while "sleeping", and it seems to use no battery power once shut down. I tried this over the last couple of days. I put it to sleep with seven applications open, and over a 10 hour period it used 5% battery power. I put it to sleep with no applications open, and it used 2% battery power over the 10 hour period. Your mileage may differ. I suppose that as long as I have access to charge the battery after waking it up, no problem. But after reading some stuff about battery use and abuse, it makes sense that discharging the battery down to 20%, and that charging it up to 80% before taking it off the charger seems a good stewardship of your equipment. I can't find the link to the article right now, and the guy that wrote it seemed to get a lot of flack about his article, but I think he's on the money. What he suggest is that discharging the battery (almost) all the way and then charging it to 100%, and then doing that over and over again does a lot of damage to the battery. I hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Lithium-Ion batteries do not like being at 0%. Their preferred level is 20-80%, but nothing wrong with having it at 100% either. Using the battery cells can be good for them. Apple's official page on their batteries says most of this too.

For different parts of the hardware there are both advantages and disadvantages to shutdowns vs. sleep. A full power fluctuation from a shutdown puts more short term stress on the hardware as it boots, but keeping it in sleep does still slowly wear out the pathways in the chip as well. Overall, ignoring battery and power implications, sleep is probably better for most of the components. At least if you use the computer semi-regularly. But for the sake of states potentially getting messed up software sometimes likes being restarted
 
Late 2014 mbp takes about 14-15 sec
Late 2018 mbp takes about 25-26 sec with T2 chip
If i disable firevault/t2 chip witch I don’t recommend, it takes around 6-7 sec
Dell xps 15 2018 take around 8 seconds
 
casperes1996 said:
Lithium-Ion batteries do not like being at 0%. Their preferred level is 20-80%, but nothing wrong with having it at 100% either. Using the battery cells can be good for them. Apple's official page on their batteries says most of this too.

For different parts of the hardware there are both advantages and disadvantages to shutdowns vs. sleep. A full power fluctuation from a shutdown puts more short term stress on the hardware as it boots, but keeping it in sleep does still slowly wear out the pathways in the chip as well. Overall, ignoring battery and power implications, sleep is probably better for most of the components. At least if you use the computer semi-regularly. But for the sake of states potentially getting messed up software sometimes likes being restarted
Click to expand...
Very informative. Thank you.
 
vaugha said:
I have the same model as yours. Filevault disabled, secure boot enabled, around 30 - 40 sec. Wonder why macos boots so much slower than w10.
Click to expand...
MacOS was built for an earlier version of EFI. I’m not sure why Apple hasn’t made the shift to UEFI. Perhaps it’s to keep it Mac-specific so that not just any PC can run macOS.
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fokmik said:
Late 2014 mbp takes about 14-15 sec
Late 2018 mbp takes about 25-26 sec with T2 chip
If i disable firevault/t2 chip witch I don’t recommend, it takes around 6-7 sec
Dell xps 15 2018 take around 8 seconds
Click to expand...
Do you have BitLocker enabled on your Dell (which I recommend for the same reason I recommend FileVault)?
 
PROFESS0R said:
Hi All,

This thread follows on the tail of another thread where someone was complaining about the boot time of their MacBook Pro. So... if you have a stopwatch, how about you note the time in seconds that it takes for your MacBook Pro to boot.

I'll start:

Computer: 2019 MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz i9 8-core, 32Gb Memory, 4Tb SSD, Vega 20 Graphics

With four external monitors connected:

52 Seconds

With no external monitors connected:

37 Seconds

Joe
Click to expand...
Macbook pro 13'' late 2011 2.4 ghz samsung 850evo ssd 500gb 4gb ram bootup time 22 secs
 
Late 2018 13" MBP, 2.3GHz 4 cores i5 chip, 16Gb of RAM running latest Catalina version (File Vault disabled) : 30s
 
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