Should I Turn My Computer Off at Night?

Many people are confused about whether to shut down their PC or put it to sleep

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published February 10, 2026

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AARP members and readers are invited to submit pressing technology questions they’d like me to tackle in my Tech Guru column, including issues around devices, security, social media and how all the puzzle pieces fit together. This week is all about putting your computer to sleep, or not.

I have a new desktop computer. I usually use it for one to two hours every evening. Should I just let it go to sleep or shut it down when I am done for the night? —Mike P.

Versions of the question you posed have been asked for years, Mike, and even now, consensus is hard to come by. A recent Facebook post on the subject generated some 300 comments, and a single post stood out most: “It depends ...”

While that may be unsatisfying, part of the answer hinges on the age and type of your computer, and how long you expect to be away from it.

“In the past, shutting your computer down every night was recommended, because older storage devices like hard disk drives had mechanical spinning parts that could wear out if they were kept running constantly,” says Julian Jimenez Burgos, who trains repair technicians at UBreakiFix by Asurion in Orlando, Florida. “Modern computers now use solid-state storage with no moving parts, so the risk of mechanical wear is no longer a concern.”

Typically, to put a computer to sleep, you either press the power button and/or, in the case of laptops, close the lid. It may also go to sleep after a stretch of inactivity. You can press the power button again or open the lid to wake it up.

Let me pause to make a quick distinction. Sleep mode puts the computer in a state with just enough power to leave data in the machine’s memory (RAM) intact while other components shut down. Some PCs also offer a Hibernate mode, which puts the PC into a deeper sleep state that uses little to no power and saves programs and open files to the startup drive. Resuming from Hibernate takes longer than from Sleep.

Microsoft recommends putting a Windows 11 laptop into Hibernate mode (if available) if you know you won’t be using the machine for an extended period of time and will not have an opportunity to charge it. One way to enter that mode: Press the Windows power key plus the X key on the keyboard | Power Options | Lid & power button controls. From there, you can select preferences for what happens when the laptop is plugged in or on battery, and when you press the power button or close the lid. Choices are Do Nothing, Sleep, Hibernate or Shutdown.

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Let’s go further into why you may want to shut a PC down or keep it running in a reduced power state.

Reasons to leave the computer on

It’s easy. You may be impatient and in no mood to wait for a computer to boot up from scratch, which, depending on the model and age of the machine, can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Whatever you stopped working on or viewing the day before is conveniently at the ready come morning.

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You need remote access. You may be traveling or have other reasons to connect from afar, maybe even because the computer is functioning as a web server, though that tends to be in the techie domain and not a typical scenario for the average consumer.

It needs to run background tasks. You’re backing up a mound of files onto an external drive, or copying files from the cloud or another external source onto your machine. Maybe you’re scanning for viruses or malware. Or installing a major new software update. You may choose to keep the computer awake to handle such chores while you sleep.

Why shut it down?

Ward off cyberattacks. If the computer is shut off, it will be safeguarded against cyberattacks, malware and other vulnerabilities. You may also want to keep it off if the machine houses sensitive files. Meanwhile, if yours is a work PC, your employer may have policies requiring you to shut the machine down when leaving the office, or at the end of the day at home.

Prolong battery life. Even though sleeping or hibernating computers don’t draw a ton of power, they’re still drawing some compared to when the computer is completely off. Obviously, battery concerns are more of an issue for laptops, at least when not plugged into an outlet like desktop counterparts.

Go green. Shutting the machine down consumes less energy in general, though how much it may save you on your annual electric bill is probably marginal.

So components won’t wear down. As noted above, newer machines have fewer moving parts that could fail over time, such as hard drives. Not all machines have cooling fans, either. Even so, the chance of something going wrong increases when the computer is powered on. It is also worth noting that some people fretted in the past that frequent shutdowns and restarts could harm a computer in the long run, but I’m not sensing much of a concern these days.

To give it a fresh start. Burgos at UBreakiFix by Asurion recommends a full shutdown at least once a week. It gives the system a “fresh start,” he says. Temporary memory or cache is cleared out, and the operating system and programs can restart “cleanly.”

Plus, many of us have experienced times when minor glitches seem to magically disappear after a reboot or shutdown.

“Think of your computer like a room you use every day,” Burgos says. “As you go about your routine, things slowly get out of place, which creates small amounts of clutter that make it slightly harder to move around or find what you need. The room still works but does not function as smoothly as it could.”

Bonus tip: A tool to detect scams via AI

Artificial intelligence is making it increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what’s fake , and it’s being used to perpetrate scams . The Malwarebytes cybersecurity firm has just released a tool inside ChatGPT that promises to use AI to help us spot and detect scams more quickly, merely by asking something like, “Is this a scam, or am I overthinking it?”

Here’s how it works: Sign in to ChatGPT and go to Apps. Search for Malwarebytes and click or press Connect. You can then vet text messages, DMs, emails, links, phone numbers and any other suspicious content using Malwarebytes’ cybersecurity data and threat database in real time.

I briefly tested it by asking whether the site www.whitehouse.com was a scam. The detailed answer started with “Yes — treat it as scam/misleading site,” before explaining how actual government sites use “.gov.” It also noted that this particular web address has been used historically for “adult content and ads.”

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Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.