Power button types on raspberry pi

[mattg31]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to get some advice from you guys on this one, as I have read some conflicting comments on some of these tutorials and threads.
I am looking to add a power button to my raspberri pi, as it will be enclosed in a case, and I want the user to use a rocker switch to shut it down safely.

This tutorial looks easy, just uses a switch, a GPIO pin and a python script at startup.
https://howchoo.com/g/mwnlytk3zmm/how-t ... spberry-pi

So if it's as easy as above, why buy this? https://www.pi-supply.com/product/pi-su ... er-switch/
There are quite a few of variants of this as well.
I would obviously rather use a simple switch and two wires, but am worried as some people mention it may not be safe due to some GPIO pins starting in a high state during bootup.

Is the first example missing something critical?

Thanks for any input!

[klricks]

The simple switch can shut down or restart the RPi but does not remove power from the RPi board. When shutdown the RPi board still uses a small amount of power.
The other switch removes power completely from the RPi board.
IMO use the simple switch method unless you want to run the RPi on batteries.

[mattg31]

Great, thanks!