Should I Shut Down My Mac When I'm Not Using It?
Question:
My brother says I should shut down my MacBook Pro whenever I'm done using it for the day. Is it ok if I just put it to sleep instead?
- Asked by Taylor B. October 28th, 2011 (Updated: November 5th, 2014)
Answer:
The short answer is that it's ok to put your Mac to sleep rather than shut it down.
The first benefit of sleep over shut down is the amount of time it takes to resume using your Mac. Usually, waking from sleep takes a matter of seconds while starting up your Mac can take much longer.
Energy savings from shutting down are minimal (if any). When your Mac is asleep, it's in a low power mode. Each time you boot up your Mac it requires a significant amount of energy. It can be very taxing on your hard drive and other components.
Here at App Sliced, we only restart our computers once a month or so and have been doing it that way for years without issue.