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Sleep vs. Shut down

rushbc

rushbc

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 5, 2012
22
2
Austin, TX
I am sorry if this is old ground that has been covered before
(I have a feeling it has, but I spent a good while searching these forums with no success)
but, I am relatively new to Macs, so I was wondering if it is bad to shut down my iMac every night, or is it better to just put it into sleep mode.

Are there benefits or disadvantages to sleep mode nightly?

Are there benefits or disadvantages to shutting down nightly?


Thanks for any guidance here…and again, sorry if this has been answered before.

p.s. My iMac is one of the new ones with a fusion drive so it cold boots in less than 20 seconds, so shutting down and starting up are so fast that it is not a time drain to cold boot.
 
Last edited:
rushbc said:
I am sorry if this is old ground that has been covered before
(I have a feeling it has, but I spent a good while searching these forums with no success)
but, I am relatively new to Macs, so I was wondering if it is bad to shut down my iMac every night, or is it better to just put it into sleep mode.

Are there benefits or disadvantages to sleep mode nightly?

Are there benefits or disadvantages to shutting down nightly?


Thanks for any guidance here…and again, sorry if this has been answered before.

----------

My iMac is one of the new ones with a fusion drive so it cold boots in less than 20 seconds, so shutting down and starting up are so fast that it is not a time drain to cold boot.
Click to expand...

Always just sleep for me. I read in a thread on here that turning on and off was bad for your computer. I don't believe there is any real proof either way, but it suits my lifestyle to just jump on when I like without booting up.
Here is a similar thread with a poll for other opinions.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1563523/
 
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There are dozens of "sleep or shutdown" threads where you'll find many Mac users run months at a time without shutting down. Either is perfectly fine. One thing to consider is that there are maintenance scripts that run on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule. If your Mac is in sleep mode at the scheduled time, the scripts will run the next time your Mac is awake. If your Mac is shut down at the scheduled time, the scripts won't run until the next scheduled time. If your Mac is always shut down at those times, the scripts will never run, unless you manually run them or change the default schedule.
 
GGJstudios said:
There are dozens of "sleep or shutdown" threads where you'll find many Mac users run months at a time without shutting down. Either is perfectly fine. One thing to consider is that there are maintenance scripts that run on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule. If your Mac is in sleep mode at the scheduled time, the scripts will run the next time your Mac is awake. If your Mac is shut down at the scheduled time, the scripts won't run until the next scheduled time. If your Mac is always shut down at those times, the scripts will never run, unless you manually run them or change the default schedule.
Click to expand...


Thanks, GG! Great info, sorry I wasn't able to find those threads
 
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