Sleep or shut down?

[Zeebedy]

hey guys,

how does sleep mode work on the Mac? Any good?

Im thinking of rather than shutting down every time I use my Mac, to put it in sleep..im guessing that power draw is minimal and safe enough to leave, say, over a day or two if need be?

 

[Stu999]

I’ve just been using sleep on my M2 Air. Makes no noticeable difference to battery life so I’d imagine it will be minimal power usage for a plugged in Mac.

 

[Zeebedy]

I’ve just been using sleep on my M2 Air. Makes no noticeable difference to battery life so I’d imagine it will be minimal power usage for a plugged in Mac.

that's a fair point, I don't shut down my MBA,just close the lid, which is the same I suppose. will try it out, hopefully it will put my speakers to sleep too..I hate having to reach over and manually turn them off at the sub.

 

[Zeebedy]

just double checked, 5watts it draws, so not too bad!

 

[ChrisD.]

On both MacBooks, I can't remember the last time I shut them down.

 

[Zeebedy]

On both MacBooks, I can't remember the last time I shut them down.

what about your desktop ChrisD?

 

[ChrisD.]

what about your desktop ChrisD?

I don't have one (well, I do, but it's Windows) but if I did I would more than likely just put it in sleep.

 

[Zeebedy]

Awesome, cheers.

 

[Feek]

Up until the energy price rises, I never switched off any of my Macs, I just put them to sleep. Now I actually care about how much power I use, I do shut down the iMac and the Studio each day.

 

[PaulM]

Sleep mode is fine and works very well on a Mac. I usually shut mine down anyway though, gives me a reason to close all the half-finished projects at the end of the day, otherwise they'd still be open a week later

 

[killsta]

Sleep mode FTW!

 

[MrRockliffe]

Sleep works well unless you keep a jabra headset adapter plugged in.

Very specific I know, but it did confuse me a few times when I came back to my Mac the next morning and it was dead.

 

[visibleman]

Sleep unless i'm away for longer than a day. Although if i'm boot-camped into Windows on one of them then they get shutdown due to the Wifi bug - adaptors don't 'wake up' after sleep.

 

[hartgeh3]

I've had Mac Minis since 2011 and none where ever shut down unless I went away on holiday.

 

[reflux]

Recent convert to Macs via Apple Silicon and I'm amazed with how good sleep mode is. With Windows, I'd shut the lid and it'd go into light sleep, which might or might not work (and if it didn't it would heat up my bag). Then a few hours later it would hibernate so the advantage of sleep (fast wakeup) is gone. With the Mac, I just close the lid every time and it's ready and waiting days later. Only ever shut down if I know I'm not going to be using it for a week or more.

 

[Cromulent]

The only advantage of shutting down I can think of it that it relocks encrypted external storage just in case someone gets into your Mac. Unlikely I know but I live in a shared house so I get a bit paranoid.