One of the ways “Sustainable Computing” is aligned with me exclusively supporting Mac users is that Macs tend to use less energy than PCs. This is primarily due to Apple controlling the whole widget, tightly integrating its hardware and software.

Apple provides a healthy set of choices for how to manage energy and its conservation on your Mac. Here are a few settings worth considering.

Energy Saver & Battery Preferences

On a desktop Mac and on macOS Catalina and earlier, there is a System Preferences pane called Energy Saver. As of macOS Big Sur, the equivalent preference pane on Mac notebook computers is called Battery.

Either way, notebooks provide two sections with separate setting choices for when the Mac is running on battery and when it’s connected to a power adapter.

Apple provides generic descriptions of the various settings in these preferences panes in its macOS User Guide. It’s worth reviewing these choices on your own and making decisions based on your expectations and needs. For a few more specific insights, read on…

Put Hard Disks to Sleep

One of the options that may appear is Put hard disks to sleep when possible. This setting has the capacity to let storage systems stop running, however it really only applies to rotational hard disks.

Further, some external drives can be problematic if instructed by the computer to go to sleep, especially when one uses professional media editing applications. Since so few modern Macs work well with this setting enabled, I recommend disabling it.

Power Nap

Apple introduced Power Nap in 2010, enabling sleeping Macs with solid-state drives to wake briefly to check for email, update calendars, and sync a variety of iCloud services. When a Mac is connected to power, Power Nap can also run Time Machine backups.

Is this feature really worth using? With fast Internet connections, maybe not. Can your Mac handle all of these updates pretty quickly when you’re ready to use it? I would venture to guess that for most of us, Power Nap is unnecessary.

Prevent Computer From Sleeping

If you rely on your Mac actively processing things at times when you’re away, you can still save energy by allowing the display alone to sleep. For example, one of my Macs folds proteins most of the time, so I have this setting enabled.

On older Macs, there were two separate timers for display sleep and computer sleep. These days, there’s a single slider for display sleep and a checkbox for Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off.

How do you save energy on your Mac? What practices do you use to increase your own computing efficiency so you can spend less time eyeing your screen?