Run it while you’re awake, not while you’re sleeping.

A portable ice maker can be left on continuously during the day, but you should turn it off overnight or when you’re not using it.

These things are built to cycle on and off, so leaving one running for a few hours while you’re watching TV or having people over is totally fine. The basket fills up, the machine stops or you empty it, and it keeps churning. That’s the job.

The problem is letting it run for hours when nobody’s around to use the ice. It’ll just melt, cycle again, waste energy, and put unnecessary wear on the pump and compressor. Noise, too — some of these things are annoyingly loud. Plus, constant operation makes mineral scale build up