I was going to setup a hot corner to put the display to sleep. On reflection, I can’t see it makes any sense for an iMac. After all, there’s no battery saving to be had when an iMac is always plugged in and secondly, putting the screen to sleep won’t put the iMac’s processor to sleep so why bother putting the display to sleep anyway. Seems to me that the ‘sleep’ options are only there for MacBooks.
Is my logic right on this please, Gary?
Thanks
The ‘why’ is simply to avoid any likelihood of screen burn when I’m away from my iMac and to minimise any wear on the components in the computer.
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Charles Bake
There are big advantages to sleep. The first is security. If you have things set up in System Preferences and security, it will lock your account after X minutes when you put it to sleep. So whether it goes to sleep automatically, or it does so with a Hot Corner or keyboard shortcut, you are indicating that you are locking your Mac. Now you can walk away and know your things are safe.
Second there is energy savings. The display is the big user of energy here, and when you put your Mac to sleep, it will turn off the display. Of course you are also increasing the life of the display. I don't know how many years a display that is always on will last, but one that sleeps while you aren't using it should last as long as you need.
The processor plays a part in this too. A processor and other parts (GPU, etc) will use more energy while awake than asleep. When you Mac is sleeping, it will still do some maintenance and checks here and there, but it is kinda in a "low power" mode most of the time.
Heat is a factor too, in terms of both the display and processor. You'll be generating less heat since you'll be using less energy.
So definitely good reasons to use sleep. You definitely don't have to put a short timer on the "X minutes before sleep" setting, or get into the habit of manually putting it to sleep every time you move away from the iMac, but it is still a good idea to have it sleep.