So if you're new to Mac there's something you're doing, perhaps every single day, that
you shouldn't really be doing.
What I'm talking about is shutting down your Mac.
Choosing Shut Down you may think is a good idea when you're finished using your Mac.
You think it might save power.
Maybe even prolong the life of your Mac.
But in fact what you're doing is you're preventing your Mac from performing some very simple,
basic, everyday maintenance tasks that it's supposed to do while you're not using it.
There's all sorts of things that your Mac does.
Like, for instance, index the files so you can do searches, perform backups, lots of
different things going on in the background that it does in a very low power mode, it's
not using very much power at all.
A lot of power is used by your screen anyway which is off.
It's doing this while you're not there.
But if you shutdown your Mac it doesn't get a chance to do it.
Then you start it up and you expect your Mac to be fast and responsive and do all this
stuff but you haven't let it perform these maintenance tasks.
So it's either going to try and perform some of them while you're trying to use your Mac
as well or it's never going to get around to doing them which is going to slowdown your
Mac.
So what you want to do instead is choose Sleep.
You don't even have to actually choose Sleep.
If you have a MacBook, a MacBook Pro, a MacBook Air just close the lid and it goes to sleep.
If you have a desktop Mac in your home, like an iMac, you can just walk away and let it
go to sleep or use a hot corner to turn the display off.
When it goes to sleep it gets the chance to perform these tasks.
Now it doesn't mean it's going to be on all night long performing tasks and maintenance.
It may only take fifteen minutes to do a lot of this stuff.
But it gets a chance to do it and then it's barely using any power at all.
Plus, when it's time to use your Mac again you hit the spacebar and it's instantly ready
for you.
You don't have to go through the starter processes which saves you a lot of time.
Really, your time is a lot more valuable.
Now Apple actually has a page that addresses this.
It talks about something called Power Nap. Power Nap is actually what your Mac is doing
when sleeping.
They call it power nap instead of sleeping because it's getting things done.
It lists a whole bunch of stuff that it does.
For instance, Spotlight indexing.
Very important and it could take up a lot of time.
It got to index all your files so it can search for things.
If you don't let your Mac do this indexing is either not going to work or it's going
to slow you down because it's doing it all the time while you're using your Mac.
But if you let your Mac sleep it'll do it while your not using your Mac.
It will perform Time Machine backups.
If you change a bunch of files and then shutdown your Mac and start it up again, now it has
to back all that stuff up.
But if you let it backup while you're not using your Mac, then the backups are tiny
and hardly noticeable.
Other things like software updates and such are done while you're not using your Mac while
it's sleeping.
There's a lot of really behind the scenes maintenance work that's done as well.
Things that will speed your Mac up while you're using it.
Now Power Nap can be controlled in System Preferences under Energy Saver.
You can see Enable Power Nap and it should be on by default.
If you've got a MacBook then you're going to see two tabs at the top here.
One for when you're plugged into power and one for when you're just using the battery.
You can have Power Nap enabled for just one for when you're plugged into power or you
can have it enabled for both.
Really, this stuff doesn't use that much power.
It's not going to change the longevity of your Mac because it's not going to use your
Mac all night long.
It's only going to use it for a few minutes here and a few minutes there.
It's going to get this stuff done.
It's going to mean better performance for your Mac.
It's going to mean that it's less time for you waiting for it to start up when you need
to use it.
So, it's just a very standard thing.
I never shutdown my Mac.
I walk away from it many times during the day for lunch, for coffee, at the end of the
day.
I come back to it all the time and it's great to be able to have it go instantly on when
I need it and not have to let it start up.
But I still hear about people shutting down their Macs all the time.
Sometimes I hear people complaining saying, Gary what's wrong with my Mac.
Why's is so slow?
After questioning I find out that they're shutting down their Mac all the time and not
letting it do any of this maintenance stuff.
Just let your Mac sleep.
There's no reason to shut it down.