Sleep or Shut Down at night?

[Jmgilliam18]

With my pc I used to just always close the lid so it would go to sleep vs hibernate or shut down. I literally would go month or more without shutting down and usually it was just because it crashed and had too lol.

In the apple menu I only see sleep and shut down and it seems if sleep overnight the battery still drains some.

What is best in Mac world? Sleep or shut down at night?

 

[Shadowbech]

I always keep mine in sleep when the lid is closed. I only lose 1% overnight. I never shut down my MacBook Pro and only do when necessary.

 

[Expos of 1969]

I put mine to sleep at night. Every week or so I shut it down completely overnight.

 

[bobnugget]

I usually put mine to sleep and keep it plugged in when I'm not using it. Battery seems fine with this - current one is 3 years old with 96% design capacity and 400 cycles. You can get a tool called coconutBattery to check your battery status if you are ever worried about that.

 

[tarsins]

I've always just shut the lid on my Macbooks. It gets shut-down once a month when I take it on the road.

I have:
Energy Saver->Battery power->Put hard disks to sleep when possible - checked
Energy Saver->Battery power->Enable Power Nap while on battery power - unchecked
Notifications->Do Not Disturb->Turn on Do Not Disturb->When the Display is Sleeping - checked

I don't lose more than 1% overnight.

 

[Fishrrman]

For 32 years (since I first got a Mac), I've shut down the computer each night and restarted the next morning.

For 32 years, I've had GREAT performance from my Macs. Seldom any problems at all.

 

[velocityg4]

I used to shutdown. But computers have become so reliable, Windows or Mac. That it is no longer necessary. How many other computers besides a desktop/laptop do people shutdown every day? Does it ever occur to anyone to shutdown their smartphone, tablet, streaming device, printer, smart speaker, NAS, router, &c every day? Those all contain computers.

Most of the time which I restart is because an update requires it.

Most of the in which I shutdown is either for maintenance or because of a thunderstorm on desktops.

Laptops I shutdown because I rarely use them. I bring the battery down to 80% on my work laptop and shutdown. Pretty much the only time I use my work laptop is occasionally at a job site. Otherwise I prefer a desktop. My other laptops are almost never used so they are discharged to 40% for storage in a cool location.

 

[Toutou]

Sleep works fine. I only restart once every few months (usually for different reasons).

 

[e1me5]

Sleep drains some battery juice because it needs to keep RAM powered on (and some other parts go to low power mode). The more RAM you have, the more power it takes.
MacBooks automatically go to hibernation mode when they are just about to run out of battery when they sleep. Apple calls this Safe Sleep. More info here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201635
You can also enable it with commands via Terminal. But I don't see the point.
My Macs remain powered on 24/7. I just close the lid when I travel with them. I only restart when updating or something behaves weird and I can't fix it with activity monitor or terminal.
No problems whatsoever, just normal wear.

 

[pshufd]

I shut down and start up. every day. Even multiple times per day.

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

Close the lid and go enjoy your life. If it's dead when I come back to it, I plug it in. I find this the easiest solution.

 

[leman]

There is no reason ever to shut down your Mac, except installing a system upgrade, booting another partition or a serious OS crash.

 

[Apple_Glen_UK]

For 32 years (since I first got a Mac), I've shut down the computer each night and restarted the next morning.

For 32 years, I've had GREAT performance from my Macs. Seldom any problems at all.

Same. When it only takes 8-10 seconds to boot up and be ready for use, for me, it seems best to shut it down properly each night. That's just how I feel though!

 

[0906742]

or a serious OS crash.

Have you ever considered these serious OS crashes may be related to sleep mode?
In my many decade long history with computers more or less all odd incidents have been more or less related to these sleep/hibernation modes and I have for long tend to turn them off immediately after use. I'm not saying they aren't meant to be used, sure they are, as that's why they are there, but there are just too many variables causing possible problems. Surely MacBooks and Mac's are different from Windows machines because this MacOS is pretty much tailor made for very limited number of different configurations where in Windows world there are like million different computer/configuration where it is supposed to work.

For example I have one older Windows machine that used to play dead when ever I put it in sleep mode and could not be revived until CMOS battery was removed/reinstalled on the mainboard each time. Sure that is pretty extreme case but I have found machine turning off and then turning on and waiting for extra seconds is usually worth the wait, plus especially with battery powered devices you lose less battery during that. I would not compare real computers with phones and tablets as those are so much different from real computers (those I of course keep always running).

 

[pshufd]

Have you ever considered these serious OS crashes may be related to sleep mode?
In my many decade long history with computers more or less all odd incidents have been more or less related to these sleep/hibernation modes and I have for long tend to turn them off immediately after use. I'm not saying they aren't meant to be used, sure they are, as that's why they are there, but there are just too many variables causing possible problems. Surely MacBooks and Mac's are different from Windows machines because this MacOS is pretty much tailor made for very limited number of different configurations where in Windows world there are like million different computer/configuration where it is supposed to work.

For example I have one older Windows machine that used to play dead when ever I put it in sleep mode and could not be revived until CMOS battery was removed/reinstalled on the mainboard each time. Sure that is pretty extreme case but I have found machine turning off and then turning on and waiting for extra seconds is usually worth the wait, plus especially with battery powered devices you lose less battery during that. I would not compare real computers with phones and tablets as those are so much different from real computers (those I of course keep always running).

I've seen a lot of problems related to sleep/hibernate since 2000 as well. Sometimes it's a software application. It might be a driver issue. But I've found that things get cleaned up with a reboot. That said, my Linux development server is often up for months at a time. In the past it could be up for years at a time but we have more frequent maintenance these days.

 

[0906742]

I've seen a lot of problems related to sleep/hibernate since 2000 as well. Sometimes it's a software application. It might be a driver issue. But I've found that things get cleaned up with a reboot. That said, my Linux development server is often up for months at a time. In the past it could be up for years at a time but we have more frequent maintenance these days.

Exactly my point. Usually servers are not going to sleep modes but are kept up and running all the time, so no issues with those keeping up for long time but I do remember in the past with Windows servers we used to make scripts to automatically boot them after certain period of time as there tend to be more or less problems after them being up for "too" long without reboots, but that was in the past and again that has not much to do with sleep issues.

 

[TheSkywalker77]

I usually sleep my Mac at night and I'll shut it down about once a week.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

I sleep them until I get home and know that I'll use it.

Same for overnight... However every Friday I fully shut it down and start it up again whenever I use it during the weekend or on Monday morning when I get to work.

 

[AnotherSoftwareEngineer]

I've never shut down any of my computers (until they were shut down for good...), Mac or PC, laptop or desktop. Never been a problem.

 

[buran-energia]

With my pc I used to just always close the lid so it would go to sleep vs hibernate or shut down. I literally would go month or more without shutting down and usually it was just because it crashed and had too lol.

In the apple menu I only see sleep and shut down and it seems if sleep overnight the battery still drains some.

What is best in Mac world? Sleep or shut down at night?

In short, sleep mode keeps the memory alive. That's why it turns on so quickly and why there is a battery drain while it's sleeping.

After a certain time and at certain conditions (not plugged in?), macbook will hibernate while it is sleeping. In other words, it will write the contents of the memory into disk and will stop powering memory. The next time you boot, it will reverse the process, but it will take more time to power on than sleep.

There are other pieces that consume a bit of power (wifi, etc.) while sleeping, but these can be turned off, and usually, the memory is the biggest drain.

I use sleep, because mine is plugged in most of the time.

 

[myscrnnm]

I've started shutting mine down every night since it started doing strange things when I kept it on too many days in a row (eg. failing to wake properly from sleep mode).

 

[Shadowbech]

I sleep them until I get home and know that I'll use it.

Same for overnight... However every Friday I fully shut it down and start it up again whenever I use it during the weekend or on Monday morning when I get to work.

Same but for me I typically power down once a month Friday and let it shut down and close the lid. Next day morning, I just open the lid and turns on the compute itself.

 

[Honza1]

With my pc I used to just always close the lid so it would go to sleep vs hibernate or shut down. I literally would go month or more without shutting down and usually it was just because it crashed and had too lol.

In the apple menu I only see sleep and shut down and it seems if sleep overnight the battery still drains some.

What is best in Mac world? Sleep or shut down at night?

In Mac world sleep and hibernate are combined. Depending on device you have (desktop vs notebook) there is different default behavior. Apples position is that users should not have to think about this and system should do automatically "the best". What the best is Apple choice and you may - or may not - agree... Typical power draw of Mac notebooks should be small for overnight (less than 2% is normal), so it is considered inconsequential.

On the other hand, user has all controls needed they ever wanted as all of this can be controlled and changed. You need to use command line tools - this is controlled by pmset command. Type "man pmset" in terminal and you will get manual page. You can change which type of sleep (sleep or hibernate or combination) is used, what the times to change them are etc. Simply, power users can do more or less all they want.

Properly setup and functioning macOS system needs reboot very rarely. Some of my macOS computers go for months between reboots. Varies depending on the use and software load... Some software tends to cause issues and hence, some people prefer to shut down their system routinely - and that is fine as well, no harm done.

 

[Smearbrick]

Same. When it only takes 8-10 seconds to boot up and be ready for use, for me, it seems best to shut it down properly each night. That's just how I feel though!

Unnecessary. Not only that, it takes more energy to boot a machine than it does to keep it running (or at least it used to). This is not your father’s computer, or your inappropriately young uncle’s computer, it’s a modern machine that is designed to run 24/7 without restarts. I never shut down my machines, unless needed for upgrades or installs.

 

[pshufd]

Unnecessary. Not only that, it takes more energy to boot a machine than it does to keep it running (or at least it used to). This is not your father’s computer, or your inappropriately young uncle’s computer, it’s a modern machine that is designed to run 24/7 without restarts. I never shut down my machines, unless needed for upgrades or installs.

My Mac hangs from time to time where I need to do a hard shutdown. So it may be a modern machine but the OS still has bugs. I don't know of any complex software that doesn't have bugs.