Powering On

When you plug in your Raspberry Pi, it turns on automatically. This happens any time the Pi is unplugged and then plugged in again. A green light on the case’s power button comes on to tell you that the Pi is powered up. When the Pi is shut down, the light will be red to indicate that your Pi is powered down, but still plugged in.

 

If your Pi is already plugged in, but shut down, simply push the power button. Your Pi will power up and the light will turn green again.

Shutting Down

There are several ways to shut down your Pi. You should never simply pull the power cord from your Pi or from the wall — such an abrupt power disruption can damage your microSD card or the Pi itself.

Remember that even when shut down, your Pi’s power button will still be red to show you that it is plugged in and ready to be powered up!

Method 1: Power Button

To shut down your Pi with the power button, simply press the button on the case. You will see a Shutdown Options menu on your screen. You can either click Shutdown on the screen or press the power button a second time. Your Pi will safely shut down.

 

This is also useful in an instance in which you have no display for your Pi for some reason. You can press the power button, pause, then press it again and your Pi will power down.

Method 2: Command Line

To shut down your Pi from the command line (either with the Terminal on the Pi or over SSH), simply enter the command

sudo shutdown now

When you hit ENTER to execute the command, your Pi will immediately and safely shut down.

There are other arguments for the shutdown command you may find useful. For example, instead of now, you could instead enter a number, such as 10. That number is how many minutes your Pi will wait to shut itself down, a very useful tool if you want the system to shut down soon, but not immediately. So, if you typed sudo shutdown 10, your Pi would count down ten minutes and then shut down.

Method 3: Graphical Interface

You can also shut down your Pi via the graphical interface on-screen.

Click on the Raspberry menu in the upper-left corner of your screen. Then choose Shutdown.

You will see the usual Shutdown Options window, from which you can choose Shutdown to immediately power down your Pi.