From the course: macOS Big Sur Essential Training

Sign in, shut down, sleep, and restart - macOS Tutorial

From the course: macOS Big Sur Essential Training

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Sign in, shut down, sleep, and restart

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- [Narrator] This video will introduce the basics of signing into your computer and shutting it down when you're finished. Every time you turn on your Mac, you will start at this Sign In screen. It's asking for my password for my user account. This is the account that you created when you did the first time set up of your computer. If you have more than one user account set up, you will see them listed here and you just need to choose the one you want to sign into. I only have one user account, which is typical. So I just need to type in my password. This keeps your computer secure. You can only use a computer if you have the password for this account, I'll type that in then I'll hit Return. So now I'm signed in and I can get to work with whatever I'm doing today, but let's talk about what you do when you're finished using the computer. To see our options, you need to go to the system menu. To do that, we'll click on the Apple logo in the top-left corner, which will open up this menu. And here you have options for Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, and Lock Screen. The Shut Down option turns the computer off completely. So you can choose this option then wait for the computer to power down. Restart turns the computer off, then immediately back on. But before you Shut Down or Restart, you will need to close all applications and tasks that you have open. But realistically, I rarely shut my computer down. It's really not necessary. Most of the time I use Sleep. Sleep basically freezes your computer where you are now, shuts off most of the system, but keeps just enough running so it remembers where you left off. This is what you should do if you know you're going to continue working on your computer later today or tomorrow. Just click on this and the screen will go black and the computer will be in Sleep mode. Or if you're using a laptop, you don't even need to click that option. You can just close the laptop lid and the computer goes to Sleep. If you are using a laptop, Sleep mode does use the battery, but very slowly. Now the next time you need to use the computer, you can click the mouse or hit a key on the keyboard, or if it's a laptop, just open the lid and it will wake up again. It does take a moment to fully wake up, but then you're back exactly where you left off. Now, if the computer is asleep for more than five minutes, you will need to put in your password again. When you wake it up, if you use the Sleep mode, you don't need to close applications or documents. You can literally just pick up right where you left off. Now, the other option I want to look at back in the menu is the option for Lock Screen. That does not Shut Down or Sleep. It just locks your screen. So you need to put in your password again to continue working. If you have sensitive material on your computer that you need to protect, but you need to step away to grab a cup of coffee or something, You should lock the screen so nobody can sit down and use your computer while you're away. When you're back, just put in your password to continue. So now you have a good idea of how to sign in into your computer, how to shut it down, or just put it to sleep when you're finished using it.

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