Why doesn't apple offer a, hibernate, option to mac users?

A Mac that loses power shuts down "unexpectedly" which means anything that is not saved becomes lost. However, all Apple apps and most non-Apple ones incorporate macOS "versioning" that periodically saves unsaved work without you having to do anything. Exceptions are likely to be limited to Microsoft products. They always had their own way of doing things.

If power interruptions become annoyingly frequent the solution is to use a UPS. Desktop Macs offer orderly shutdown options when using a UPS with USB communication.

You did not ask but portable Macs never lose power "unexpectedly" and will write unsaved RAM contents to mass storage when battery power becomes critically low. This is the equivalent of "hibernate mode". Desktop Macs sold in some parts of the world will do that every time they sleep to meet hyper-zealous regulatory impositions that seek to minimize every microwatt (literally).

Another reason is that macOS likes to wake up to perform maintenance tasks. Know one really knows why Apple does or does not do certain things and Apple will never tell us.

I believe there is a way to configure the Mac to use traditional hibernation instead of sleep, but I have never tried it. I only discovered the option this week while performing some troubleshooting & research.

Here is the command to retrieve the current hibernation value which should be "3" by default for sleep:

pmset  -g  |  grep  'hibernatemode'

IIRC from my research, a value of 25 should provide you with hibernation as you described:

sudo  pmset  hibernatemode  25

This will prompt you for your admin password. Nothing will appear on the screen while typing the password, so press the "Return" key to submit the password.

I have not tried nor have I tested this setting, plus I am going from memory that "25" is the correct value since I don't know exactly where I saw that posted. Use at your own risk.

IIRC, the "-1" value was only for the PPC Macs.

FYI, You do need to be careful what you try from things you find online and make sure they apply to the exact model Mac & OS you are using since things change a lot over time. This even more true for M-Series Macs where using some settings a command line utility is known to prevent an M-series Mac from booting (yes sometimes a person can recover without a full reset, but other times a full reset with no way to recover any data except through backups).

You can write a script or app if you wish. Once the value is set, you should not need to change it unless you reinstall the OS.

... what I like about hibernate moad is it saves every open application and file to a file on the harddrive and turns off the computer, using no power at all,

What is the difference between that and shutting down the Mac?

And like I said why doesn't Apple just give you a hibernate option just like on windows?

If I had to guess, Apple's design philosophy is that users need not concern themselves with that kind of minutia. There is no particular benefit to shutting down a Mac anyway. When you're not using it, just ignore it. You don't routinely shut down an iPhone, do you? Same idea.

In an iMac loses power, it gets shut down. However, Macs are pretty resilient and in my experience when power is restored it will attempt to reopen apps in their immediate past state provided you have set at least these two settings:

• Settings > Energy Saver > Start up automatically after a power failure
• Desktop & Dock > DE-select "Close windows when quitting an application"

n1mie wrote:

It is not the same as hibernate. Hibernate saves the computer state and doesn't have to completely restart the system. So it goes from hibernating to being used very quickly.

I shut down a M1 Max Mac Studio and timed how long it took to get from power off to the login screen. About 15 seconds. I'd say that's pretty quick.

If you shutdown, and check the open apps on boot, it will restore everything where you left off. That is the same as hibernate.

Just to add the specifics, in System Preferences (Settings) > General, UNcheck "Close windows when quitting an app." That will save the state of each app when you quit an app and/or shut down, effectively saving the state of each open app & file same as hibernate mode would do.

Mac laptops actually do hibernate, but it's only when the battery reaches something like 4%. You really should not be doing terminal commands to manually force hibernation; you could cause yourself problems.

It is not the same as hibernate. Hibernate saves the computer state and doesn't have to completely restart the system. So it goes from hibernating to being used very quickly.