Once you have turned on your iPad, it will stay on until it either completely drains its battery down, or until you manually turn it off yourself. In most cases, you may not need to turn off your iPad, since it will automatically fall asleep after a few minutes of inactivity. But if you know that you will take your iPad for trip, for example, and be away from a steady power source for a while, turning off your iPad completely instead of just letting it sleep may make a slight difference in the total amount of time and battery life you will have.
Power off your iPad
This is how you switch off an iPad and leave it turned off:
- Once with your iPad in hand, press both the "Home" button (circle located at the bottom of the iPad), and the "Sleep" button, long and narrow located in the "top right" corner of the iPad, opposite Home, as shown below:
- If you were to release these two buttons right away, it would simply take a screenshot; instead, keep them pressed for a few seconds, and a redirect slider will appear on screen, that reads "Slide to power off". To keep your iPad running and turned on, just tap on the "Cancel" button at the bottom (that turn off power prompt will disappear itself after a few seconds without action on your part). Otherwise, slide the power off button to the right, and your iPad will turn off within just a few seconds, and the screen will go completely black.
- Once your iPad is turned off, it will use no power at all; but batteries lose their charge over time, so even if you keep your iPad turned off, the battery will be empty after a month or so.
If you try to start an iPad that has been turned off, or has itself shut down (because of low battery life remaining), you will be unable to reboot it. In that case, you just need to plug it to a power source: either to an A/C outlet, or by plugging it into a powered USB port on your desktop PC / Mac or laptop.