Mac Mini M4 upside down? Other methods to power on?

[Altis]

I turn mine off mostly because I find it wakes easily (any vibration to the mouse from the desk or a cat stepping on its wire seems to wake it), and because I use a KVM (via monitor) with a PC so I prefer the Mini not to be aware of the devices disconnecting when it's not in use.

So I use the power button every day that I use it. It's not the end of the world to lift the computer to press the button where I have it but it's also a pretty silly place for the button. The back makes the most sense to me but the front would have been fine, too.

 

[Andy_2341]

To the faction telling to put it to sleep mode because the sleep mode is so good at apple:

Have you actually tried putting it into sleep mode ? That works like after the fifth Click on sleep Mode because when you Click on that you should Not move the mouse at all. Otherwise going into sleep will be interrupted. And once it was interrupted clicking on „sleep mode“ works after x clicks.

Once it is in sleep mode though it will wake up here and then and turn on my keyboard‘s and mouse lights.

Yes I turned every option enabling this auto wake up off. Still that thing wakes up on its own.

Turning it off is the only way to have the Mac in a reliable state when not in use.

I would suggest using hot corners set to screen saver, and then set it to go to sleep after however long on screen saver that you want. Move the mouse to the corner and let go once it goes to screen saver. This is what I’ve used since I got my Mac mini and it has been pretty much flawless.

 

[Andy_2341]

This almost religious hate speech on the topic “you don’t need to turn off the poppy” is starting to get annoying. Not everything is perfect in this world. Yes, the Mac barely consumes any energy in sleep mode, but that's the only plus in all of this.
Otherwise, there are only problems:
1) The Mac continues to power all external devices in sleep mode, that is, if it's a desktop, the consumption will no longer be zero.
2) Because of point 1, you get additional heating, for example, external SSDs, sound cards, or the device itself (the same Mac Mini M4 Pro heats up very well in sleep mode, and there are also many reviews about the same behavior of the Mac Studio).
3) Any movement nearby wakes up the Mac. Any movement of the mouse (and often, it is enough for a child to just run nearby for a micro-movement) and the Mac wakes up. Monitors also actively wake up the Mac every 5-10 minutes when connected via Type-C, and this problem has not been solved for almost 10 years. That is, in the case of a monitor, there is no point in using a Type-C connection to use, for example, a built-in USB hub.
4) Memory leaks are still not gone anywhere. For example, Adobe Photoshop does not know how to free up memory normally or use the system archived memory. And if you, as a photographer, need to retouch a lot, you still want to restart the system once a day, and how is this different from "turning it off for the night"?

As a result, we get a situation in which for "normal" sleep you have to turn off all peripherals, monitors, mice, keyboards, etc. This looks much more complicated than just turning off only the Mac and not touching anything else.

P.S. unless you use narrow shelves to place the Mac Mini (which is bad for temperatures anyway), but the location of the power button doesn't create any big problems anyway. I prefer to use it even to put the device to sleep, because the shortcut almost never works.

On point 3, I didn’t know about that. I’ve had my M4 Mini plugged into a 27” LG via type-c since Christmas Day and haven’t seen this at all. It would definitely wake me up since it is in my room facing the bed. Did I just get lucky or something?

 

[Leading_Top_7001]

stand it up with log side facing front, and the ports towards your ceiling

 

[colodane]

Use a support stand for the Mini with a hole cut out so you finger can access the on/off button on the bottom. They do exist and have had mentions on this forum.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Mine got here yesterday. I have it on its side with the bottom facing outwards and the switch at the top left. That way all ports are available as needed.

 

[bzgnyc2]

Mine got here yesterday. I have it on its side with the bottom facing outwards and the switch at the top left. That way all ports are available as needed.

That's how I've been running my 2018 Mac Mini ever since I saw a post on Macrumors suggesting such. It runs fine in its normal orientation but does run slightly cooler that way (giving more headroom/less throttling under heavy load).