Mac Studio - Do I need to shutdown?

Are you referring to a smart plug that physically disconnects the power?

If so... doing this to a running Mac has a high likelihood of resulting in data corruption. Especially the OS files.

If you like to live dangerously keep doing what you're doing.

<<. Do I need to gracefully first shutdown the Mac Studio - By clicking the Apple Icon & then select shutdown >>

yes, THAT is what you need to be doing.

Uncontrolled power-down leaves the disk directory Master copy still in RAM, in a Checked Out state, and the last updates may have only been made to the copy in RAM. This could leave your your disk damaged, and your Mac un-start-able.

but wait, there's more.

<< and then Say Alexa Mac off. >>

Don't do that. Dropping the AC power to your Mac leaves the non-recharging PRAM backup battery working all night long to maintain the parameters needed for graceful (or sometimes ANY) startup in the morning. Unless you love replacing those batteries on very short notice, leave it connected to AC power.

Prior to Ventura a user could set the Mac to startup each day at a specific time and shut down each nigh at a specific time. This was in the Energy Saver pane. Now Apple removed that so you have to use terminal to make that happen. Here is the outline to do that:

Using Terminal to set start up and shut down each day

Separately:

Shut down each day at 9:30 pm:

Sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 21:30:00  and hit return

Enter PW if required

Startup every day at 6:00AM:

Sudo pmset repeat wake MTWRFSU 6:00:00 and hit return

To have both startup and shutdown:

Sudo pmset repeat poweron MTWRFSU 6:00:00 shutdown MTWRFSU 21:30:00

To check if these were set:

Pmset -g sched

To cancel all settings:

Sudo pmset repeat cancel and hit return

Monday=M

Tuesday=T

Wednesday=W

Thursday=R

Friday=F

Saturday=S

Sunday=U

Or do what I do. I have auto boot up and auto shut down each day using the terminal command.

pumping4ever wrote:

Do I need to gracefully first shutdown the Mac Studio - By clicking the Apple Icon & then select shutdown

and then Say Alexa Mac off

Yes, absolutely. By cutting power without doing a graceful shutdown, you are risking data corruption.

I leave my Mac Studio turned on almost all of the time, unless I think there is a danger of power interruptions; and just turn accessories (monitor, etc.) on and off. But that's partly from habit – from using Macs where "wake from sleep" was much faster than "boot from power off."

It's amazing how fast the Mac Studio boots. It gets to the login prompt in just a few seconds. Finding the power button on the Studio takes almost as much time as the actual boot sequence.

pumping4ever wrote:

Usually on a mac i just close the lid and the machine gets to a sleep state and all work saved & no disk corruption or anything.

Sleep is a different thing from cutting all power without warning.

When you put a Mac to sleep, a notebook Mac usually still has power from its battery; and a desktop Mac usually still has power from the wall. The Mac essentially does an abbreviated version of a graceful shutdown – and then enters a low (not zero!) power state, where some components may have had power cut in a controlled way.

When you wake a Mac from sleep, it does an abbreviated reinitialization of the hardware, using data that it saved during the sleep "shutdown."

It's still a graceful process – just a different one, predicated on the assumption that there will be a minimal level of power available to maintain critical state while the machine is sleeping.

But for the mac studio - Its a different treatment.

You can put a Mac Studio to sleep, and wake it later. But leave it connected to power while it is sleeping.