Why & How to Turn Off PS4 Console
Turning off a PS4 console closes all apps that are open and exits the PS4 operating system safely so hardware isn’t damaged and your operating system isn’t corrupted. But you have to do it correctly or else you may wreck the innards of your console.
Unlike most electrical appliances, the PS4 game console shouldn’t be turned off by pressing the same button that you pressed to turn it ‘on’. If you do that, you can actually lose data or damage some of the processes in the machine. Think of turning off the PS4 properly as letting it fall asleep – just pushing the ‘on’ button or unplugging the PS4 while it’s on would be like knocking it out with a punch!
In today’s day and age, it is not imperative to turn off your PS4 unless if you are making changes to the hardware, if your PS4 is running slow or freezes, or simply if you have any kind of inconvenience with the PS4 performance.
Turning off the PS4 has been known to be very effective in resolving a large number of errors and issues in the PS4 system. For that reason we have composed this article to enlighten you on the benefits of turning off the PS4 and how to do it correctly without harming your game console.
Benefits & Reasons Why To Turn Off PS4
Are you wondering: “Should I turn off my PS4 every day?”
To turn off or leave your game console running has been up for debate for as long as the PlayStation console has been around. Many people leave their PS4 on for days or even weeks at a time, but is that really a smart choice? There are many benefits to turning off your PS4 every day, let’s take a look at a few.
1. Extended Lifespan
Even if you use your PS4 throughout the day and every day, you can help extend the lifespan of your game device by turning it off at the end of the night. While it’s true that every game console, including the PS4 and PS5, will eventually wear out and need to be repaired or replaced, certain parts are more sensitive to being left on for extended periods of time. Also, when the PS4 is on, it generates heat. Even as the fan runs, this heat is wearing down parts and shortening the life of the console. For this reason, turning off your PS4 after a day’s work could extend your device’s life by months or even years.
2. Improved PS4 Performance
Have you ever left your PS4 on for days and noticed that it’s slowing down? It could be for many reasons including random apps hogging resources and fragmented files that are taking up extra processing power. A fresh reboot can help free up resources by shutting down unnecessary apps running in the background and discarding file fragments. Here are some other PS4 performance problems you may fix or avoid by turning off every day:
- Driver crashes. The driver of PS4 graphics card, controller, external hard drive, monitor and just about any other driver you can think of can crash or malfunction. When you turn off your PS4 every day, it gives your system a chance to fix those crashes and reboot the driver properly.
- Memory hogs. Sometimes apps get greedy and they begin hogging your PS4 memory. When they do this, this can slow down or even freeze the PS4 system. When you turn off, your PS4 system will stop the memory hog from causing problems and give you a smoother and faster experience.
- Wi-Fi malfunction. Wi-Fi is great, but sometimes it just doesn’t work no matter how many times you try. When that’s the case, turning off your PS4 can help reload the Wi-Fi tool properly.
3. Protection From Power Surges
When you leave your PS4 on 24/7, there’s always a chance that it can get damaged during a storm. Power surges can destroy your PS4, cost you financially, and cause you to lose unsaved data or data that wasn’t backed up in the cloud (read more on this topic here). It’s important to note that while surge protectors will protect your PS4 from small spikes in electricity, they won’t protect you from large surges such as lightning strikes. And if there is a storm in the middle of the night, any PS4 console left on is vulnerable.
4. Save Money
Running your PS4 non-stop is costing you money. But the cost of electricity isn’t the only concern you should have regarding PS4 game consoles that are left on non-stop. As we mentioned earlier, the cost for repairing or replacing equipment can quickly add up. And since it’s often more convenient to repair PS4 consoles than replace them, you could end up not getting the longest possible lifespan from your devices.
Dangers of Incorrectly Turning Off the PS4
Do not turn off your PS4 with that physical power button. That is only a power-on button. It is very important that you shut down your system properly. Simply turning the power off with the power switch can cause serious file system damage. While the system is on, files are in use even if you are not doing anything. Remember that there are many processes running in the background all the time, and using the power switch does not allow the graceful shutdown of your PS4.
The real danger of blackouts, brownouts, and using the PS4’s power switch is the “unexpected PS4 shutdown.” The PS4 operating system is complex and it must go through a “shutdown sequence” to make sure all running processes have correctly terminated before powering off. A sudden loss of electricity can interrupt important threads and leave your PS4 in an inoperable state.
PS4 system files are the largest concern. Consider what happens when the PS4 hard drive is writing data to the disk but suddenly shuts down in the middle of it. Suppose the file being written was a system file necessary for the booting process? Now that file is corrupted and you cannot boot up your PS4 without going through an involved recovery procedure that’s not guarantee to resolve the issue.
Furthermore, frequent power outages can reduce the PS4’s hard drive’s physical lifespan. The read-and-write head, which hovers over the spinning platters during operation, snaps back into its original position upon power loss. This sudden movement can cause tiny imperfections that accumulate over time, increasing the likelihood of a “head crash” (a malfunction that occurs when the head touches and scrapes the platter surfaces, effectively destroying the hard drive). Solid-state drives can also suffer catastrophic damage from sudden power cuts. Issues can range anywhere from data corruption to total malfunction, though they are more resistant to that than hard drives.
What Happens When You Correctly Turn Off the PS4
There are a lot of things happening during the turn-off process. Here are just a few examples of what happens when you request your PS4 to turn off:
These processes are not performed during the unexpected power termination (blackout, brownouts, and using the power switch.
Is unexpected PS4 Turn-Off Harmful?
While your hardware will not generally be damaged during an unexpected power shutdown, the contents of your disk drive will most likely be damaged. Issues like PS4 database corruption, PS4 freezes and crashes, PS4 cannot start the application, and many other are just a result of data damage on the hard drive.
Holding the power button down is no different than an actual power interruption as far as the PS4 is concerned. If you are working on any application when things go bad, then at a minimum you will lose your unsaved work. Beyond that, it is also possible that the abrupt turn-off will cause data corruption in any files that you have open. This can potentially make those files behave incorrectly, or even make them unusable. While unlikely, it can be a major inconvenience if it does happen, and the risk serves as a reminder of the importance of backing up your data regularly.
Besides corrupting your PS4 system, applications, and data files, the disk status of what locations are available on your disk drive may now be invalid. Restarting your PS4 after an unexpected power termination can cause the PS4 to write over previous assigned portions of your disk drive, and most likely you will not find out until later date that something has been corrupted (destroyed).
How to Turn Off PS4
So, after you have learnt the benefits of turning off the PS4 and why you should do it correctly, not by just switching off power, now you’ll learn how to turn off PS4 safely in the right way.
1. On your PS4 controller, press and hold the PS button for a second or two at the bottom-middle of your controller (this is my actual controller). This can be done in game or any screen you are on that I have noticed.
2- This will bring up the Quick Menu on your system. Now, select the Power option on the Left and then just click the Turn Off PS4 option on the right.
That is how you do this with the PS button/controller. Next I will show you how you do it from the home screen.
Turn off PS4 From Home Screen
This is another way to turn off PS4 safely.
1- From the Home Screen of the PS4, head to the top menu and on the far right select the Power Icon.
2- You’ll get the same options as the ones above when you click the PS button on the controller.
That’s it all.
Conclusion
It’s way too easy to turn off PS4 safely in a way that doesn’t harm your files or system. But, in spite of that, many users don’t know how to turn off PS4 correctly, and still need to learn.
On the other hand, there is a variety of users don’t want to turn off their PS4 at all, or at least keep it on for so many days. These people are surely wrong and they have to learn about the benefits of turning off PS4 from time to time.