I use an iPad for sheet music and leave it on my piano stand. If I won't be using it for a few days, I manually shut it down to save battery. Occasionally, while I'm nowhere near it, the Apple logo appears and it starts up to the lock screen as though someone pressed the power button. There are no accessories connected and it hasn't been plugged in. It has a thin clear case, plus a metal disc on the back for attaching it to a stand, and it usually sits in landscape orientation. The iPad is updated and has plenty of free storage. It isn't causing a serious problem, but I'm curious what could be triggering it.
2 Answers
A failing or aging battery could cause unexpected shutdowns and restarts, so checking Battery Health would be worthwhile. Also make sure the system is fully updated and that there’s plenty of free storage. That said, the fact that it was bought a few years ago doesn’t necessarily guarantee the battery is still in perfect condition.
This sounds similar to the automatic inactivity-related reboot behavior introduced in newer Apple operating systems. Devices may restart after being left untouched for several days as a security measure. It theoretically shouldn’t happen when an iPad is completely shut down, so it may not explain this perfectly, but the timing and the Apple-logo boot screen are a close match.
I’m not sure whether that feature applies after a full shutdown, but it seems like the closest explanation so far. The behavior is almost exactly what I’m seeing, so I’m happy to treat that as the most likely cause unless it happens often enough to point to a hardware problem.