The Mac has always been known for its many keyboard shortcuts that you can use to make your computer perform various tasks.
By pressing a combination of keys, you can cut/copy and paste, fire up Spotlight search, sleep, and shut down, among other functions.
But when it comes to restarting your MacBook, most of you would simply press and hold the power button to power it down. Then, you d press the same button to turn it back on.
There s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it might be helpful if you could do both shutdowns and restart with one action. A keyboard shortcut to put your MacBook to sleep could also be handy.
Furthermore, what if your MacBook doesn t seem to even have a power button? In fact, the Touch ID sensor on Touch Bar MacBook models doubles as a power button.
Read along with this quick guide to learn how to shut down, restart or put your MacBook to sleep using keyboard shortcuts.
It s also important to note that these keyboard shortcuts will also work with desktop Macs, including the iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro.
Keyboard Shortcut to Restart a MacBook
To manually restart your MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, you simply press and hold the following combination keys:
Control + Command + Power/Eject/Touch ID button
Note that the above combination keys will force your MacBook to restart, without prompting you to save any open and unsaved documents.
So, make sure that you have saved the documents that you are working on before pressing the combination keys.
How to Put Your MacBook to Sleep?
Aside from restarting your MacBook using keyboard shortcuts, you can also put it into sleep mode.
To do this, you simply need to press and hold the following combination keys:
Option + Command +Power/Eject/Touch ID button
How to Shut Down Your MacBook Using Keyboard Shortcuts
Finally, you can also use a combination of keys to shut down your Mac. By doing so, you will be prompted whether you want to save changes to documents you are currently working on.
This is important since these combination keys will also close all open apps. See the combination keys below:
Control + Option + Command +Power/Eject/Touch ID button
How to Restart a MacBook Without Pressing the Power Button?
Now, for those who are asking how they can restart a MacBook without pressing the power button, well, the process is pretty simple.
You just have to click on the Apple menu, then click Restart. But what if your Mac is unresponsive? How do you force restart it then?
In this situation, you can try using the keyboard shortcuts for shutting down your MacBook mentioned in the previous section.
If this doesn t work, your last resort would be to unplug your Mac and wait for the battery to deplete and power off the computer.
Then charge your MacBook and wait for a couple of minutes. If it doesn t boot up automatically, you’ll have no choice but to press the power button.
Final Words: Other Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
Aside from restarting, putting your MacBook to sleep, or shutting it down, there are other Mac keyboard shortcuts that you should find time to check out.
Although it would be impossible to memorize all of them, it would be worth your time to browse through the list and then pick up some keyboard shortcuts that you think would be useful to your daily work.
Also, check out Apple s list of Mac keyboard shortcuts. If you scroll down the page, you will also see links for other useful shortcuts that are specific to macOS apps and features.
These include Spotlight, Accessibility, Startup, and even Safari shortcuts.
