Reduce the sleep timer on your devices
Many devices including TVs, computers, games consoles, and phones automatically go to sleep after a set amount of time. Sometimes it's called auto power off or display timeout or something like that.
Reducing your devices sleep timer can have many benefits, including…
- Greater agency
- Lower energy bills
- Longer lifetime of your devices
- Longer battery life
- Improved security
Some benefits of reducing the sleep timer on your devices
When a sleep timer on a device activates one of two things happens:
- If you were unknowingly using the device it switches off.
- If you were knowingly using the device you are forced to make a decision to continue using it or not.
Interruptions, especially ones that require decision making, can be frustrating. Added friction feels bad and device manufacturers want you to feel good about their products. So they set the default time-to-sleep to the maximum they're allowed to. e.g. 4 hours on a TV1 or 10 minutes on a laptop2.
Your goals may not be aligned with the goals of an executive at Sony or Apple. They want you to use your devices all day long, love them, throw them in a landfill, buy a new one, and generate a lot of data to sell to advertisers along the way.
There is a chance your goals are broader and not entirely related to looking at screens. You might want to compose music, give your dog more affection, read more, make a budget, plant a vegetable garden, or clean the local river.
That added bit of friction gives you the chance to think "no, I won't watch another episode of Pluribus, I'm going to crack the Zodiac killer's final cypher instead"
It also gives you the chance to think "I'm going to watch all of Pluribus. My worth is not based on my contribution to society and I don't need an excuse to have a good time." The binge watch will be all the more enjoyable knowing you made a conscious decision to do it.
Lower energy bills
If you're devices are powered on they are using energy — increasing your energy bills. But how much by? Here are some examples using current energy prices in California — $0.34 per KW/H3 — because it's a high number and that's more dramatic:
- Televisions. Modern TVs run between
50 Wattsall the way up to470 Wattsdepending on the size of the screen.4 1 hour of unwanted television can cost you between$0.017and$0.16. Reducing an hour of unwanted TV use every day for a year you would save you between$6.20and$58.32. - Laptops. All computers are different and their screens vary in size and power consumption. I think it's fair to say the screen uses about a third of the energy.
10 wattsto40 watts. if you reduced the sleep timer from10 minutesto1 minuteand you left your screen on twice a day for a year you would save between$0.66and$2.64. - Phones. Phones are very efficient. The new iPhone 17 can store
14.5 watt hours5 of energy. If you charged it from20%to80%every day for a year it would cost you$1.07. I'm not even sure how to work out the savings from reducing the sleep timer from1 minuteto30 seconds. Maybe$0.01.
Longer battery life
Reducing the sleep timer on devices with batteries increases their battery life and decreases your chances of being abandoned in the wilderness without a working Nintendo Switch.
Longer lasting devices
The more you use a device the less it will last. This is particularly important for battery powered devices which have a set number of charge cycles before they go kaput.
Better security
If your phone or laptop is unlocked then someone can access it without your password and steal your data — or they can turn on airplane mode so you can't track them after they've stolen your device. The sooner your device auto locks the less likely someone is to access it while you're tying your shoe laces.
Some reasons you might want your TV to switch off sooner
- You have fallen asleep. A lot of people fall asleep while watching TV, perhaps over half of all TV havers.6 While I can't find the initial study that says that, I have definitely done this many times, and my friend does every night. So based on that survey of two people we can revise the number to 100%.
- The TV is just on in the background. Many people leave the TV on in the background. Either because it's comforting to hear familiar voices when you're alone, a distraction from inner turmoil, or it prevents dead silence in conversations. These are valid reasons, but can lead to a TV just being on for the sake of it when no one is really using it.
- Everybody thinks someone else is watching the TV. In households where the TV is often on, nobody turns it off, because everyone thinks someone else is watching it.
- An emergency happens. A bad one where you don't have time to switch off your TV.
- You are watching the curling. I think we can all agree that anything I don't personally find interesting is not worth watching in the first place.
Sleep timers and how to reduce them
Here is a non-exhaustive list of devices that have sleep timers, auto locks, display timers, or auto switch offs. Turn them all down and save many dollars.
- Televisions and monitors Often this will be buried deep in the settings. Your TV may have a submenu titled Eco settings. Some TVs also give you the choice of setting a time like
2:00 amfor the TV to switch off. - TV streaming devices Devices like Apple TV usually have inactivity timeouts built in. Some of them allow you to select a shorter period. This has a knock on effect, as your TV will likely switch off sooner if it stops receiving a signal.
- Computers On MacOS you can change these timers in the
System Settingsunder the headingLock Screen. On Windows sleep timer settings can be found inSettingsunder the headingScreen & Sleep timers. - Phones and Tablets On iOS the setting is called
Auto-Lockand can be found inDisplay & Brightnesssettings. On Android phones this setting is calledScreen timeoutand is located in theDisplay and brightnesssettings. - Games consoles All modern games consoles have settings that save energy if they detect inactivity. I can't think of a good reason not to set this to a very low number.
- Games controllers Games controllers automatically switch off. Usually after 10 minutes of inactivity. Most games consoles don't allow you to change this setting, but Playstation does apparently.