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Over the years, the BlackBerry has been known as the always-on device. You never have to turn it off, so all of your emails and other messages are always a few thumb clicks away, even while you sleep. Yet for some, especially the growing consumer market, that can be a bug, not a feature. The temptation is there to just leave it on and just not check it, but sometimes and act of will is not enough. Thankfully, the BlackBerry comes with a feature which allows you to automatically turn the device off, and then back on, at specific times.

To set your on-off settings, go to Options, then, predictably, Auto On/Off.

The software divides the Auto On/Off feature into weekdays and weekends, so you can choose to only have your device turn off when you’re not working. You’ll have to enable one or both, obviously, in order to set the Auto On/Off.

This is a daily setting, so if you’re going to set an off time for weekdays, make sure it’s not when you need it (i.e., when you’re working). Also, make sure that it’s not around the time you use your alarm. The last thing you’d want is for your alarm to go off while your device is rebooting, or worse yet, still sleeping.

There you have it. If you ever want to stop the BlackBerry from shutting off automatically, just go back into the Auto On/Off settings and return the Weekday and Weekend fields to Disabled. Then your Berry will power through the day and night. But when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t resist the temptation to see what’s behind the blinking red lights, don’t blame us.

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