Sleep or shut down?

Zeebedy · 24 Mar 2024 at 15:38

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 · 24 Mar 2024 at 15:41

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 · 24 Mar 2024 at 15:47

Stu999 said:
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 · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:15

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

ChrisD. · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:20

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

Zeebedy · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:37

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

what about your desktop ChrisD?

ChrisD. · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:39

Zeebedy said:
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 · 24 Mar 2024 at 16:41

Awesome, cheers.

Feek · 24 Mar 2024 at 17:33

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 · 24 Mar 2024 at 17:37

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 · 29 Mar 2024 at 14:12

Sleep mode FTW!

MrRockliffe · 29 Mar 2024 at 14:34

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 · 29 Mar 2024 at 19:11

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 · 29 Mar 2024 at 20:56

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