Yes, the Raspberry Pi does not come with a power button to either shut down or reboot the board. You need to use the Terminal or the Desktop GUI to apply the changes. But the best part is that you can remotely connect to Raspberry Pi and SSH your way into the Terminal. From there, you can shut down or reboot the Raspberry Pi with ease. You can even choose to use your Windows laptop as a monitor for Raspberry Pi to execute these operations. So to learn about the steps to shut down the Raspberry Pi in detail, let’s head over to the tutorial.
We have explained multiple ways to shut down or reboot a Raspberry Pi in this article. You can either use the Desktop GUI, Terminal, or even add a physical power button to the RPi board. With that said, let’s dive in and take a look at these methods:
- How to Shut Down Raspberry Pi
- Method 1: Desktop GUI
- Method 2: Using Terminal Commands
- Method 3: Add a Power Button to Raspberry Pi
- Method 4: Pull the Plug
- How to Reboot Raspberry Pi
- Method 1: Desktop GUI
- Method 2: Using Terminal Commands
How to Shut Down Raspberry Pi
Method 1: Desktop GUI
If you are using Raspberry Pi through the Desktop GUI (say Raspbian OS), shutting down the board is as simple as it can get.
- Next, click on the “Shutdown” button in the pop-up window, and that’s pretty much it. Your Raspberry Pi will shut down immediately.
If you like to use the Terminal on the Raspberry Pi through SSH or wired connection, you have several ways to shut down the Raspberry Pi.
or
sudo shutdown -h now
Method 3: Add a Power Button to Raspberry Pi
Lastly, if you are too lazy to go through the Terminal or desktop GUI, you can simply disconnect the power cable to shut down your Raspberry Pi. This will turn off the Raspberry Pi instantly, but we advice you to use any of the other methods described above. That said, make sure you save all your work if you prefer to pull the plug.
Similar to the shutdown process, you can reboot your Raspberry Pi from the Desktop GUI environment. The steps are also the same.
- To restart Raspberry Pi instantly, fire up the Terminal and run either of the below commands. These commands work via a wired or SSH connection, so you can reboot a Raspberry Pi board remotely as well.
sudo shutdown -r now
