How to schedule your Mac to start up and shut down on its own

Apple’s new Mac Mini looks for illustration personification deed the Mac Studio pinch a shrink ray, and I emotion it. But location is astatine slightest one, uh, hot-button issue: you person to scope underneath it to powerfulness it on. If that bothers you (and you’re not into flipping it upside down truthful it looks for illustration it’s wearing a small hat), you tin automate erstwhile it starts up and shuts down by creating a powerfulness schedule. I’ll show you how.

There are plentifulness of reasons you mightiness want to do this. I did it connected my MacBook Air because I don’t usage it that often, and I sewage tired of opening its lid only to find a dormant laptop. Someone other mightiness want their machine to aftermath up successful the mediate of the nighttime to execute scheduled backups. Others mightiness request to unopen down their Mac for business reasons.

Once upon a time, you could create specified a schedule utilizing an easy settings paper successful System Preferences. Sadly, that peculiar characteristic didn’t make the leap to macOS Ventura erstwhile Apple replaced System Preferences pinch the iOS-like System Settings app.

The bully news is that, moreover aft Apple sewage free of its easy-to-use powerfulness schedule settings, you tin still create the automations it enabled. The bad news is that you person to usage Apple’s bid statement tool, Terminal, to do it. It’s a daunting task if you haven’t messed pinch bid statement interfaces, and Apple’s support instructions for mounting up powerfulness scheduling this measurement aren’t very helpful. But don’t worry. I’ll picture really to do it below.

But first, a mates of notes.

Things to know

When utilizing Terminal to group your Mac’s powerfulness schedule, you can’t participate the bid for startup and shutdown separately — the Mac only honors 1 schedule, and it’s the past 1 you put in. So, if you effort to group your startup clip and then your shutdown time, it will only usage the shutdown time. Instead, you’ll request to participate a azygous command.

Second, while it’s nosy to usage Terminal and dress you’re a machine wizard, it tin besides beryllium vulnerable if you participate the incorrect commands. The ones elaborate beneath won’t do thing harmful, but you should ne'er participate random commands if you don’t understand what they do. Here’s a website that explains overmuch of the syntax you will use. (You tin besides type “man pmset” successful Terminal to get a akin list.)

How to group up a macOS powerfulness schedule

Unless you’ve moved it, Terminal should beryllium located successful the Utilities files wrong your Mac’s Applications folder. If you can’t find it, effort pressing ⌘ (command) + spacebar to summon Spotlight search, type “Terminal,” and deed enter.

Below is the first portion of your command, which sets what clip you want your machine to commencement up each day. Type this in, but don’t deed participate yet, because there’s much to come.

Next, you’ll group which days you want the schedule to run. If you only want weekdays, the adjacent connection successful your drawstring is conscionable “weekdays,” without punctuation. Otherwise, each time is represented by a azygous letter. These are each entered successful 1 chunk, without spaces betwixt the letters. Here are the missive codes:

Next, you’ll participate the time, formatted arsenic HH:MM:SS. For example, 7AM is 7:00:00 and 10AM is 10:00:00. Use 24-hour time. (If you’re not acquainted pinch it, the easiest measurement to fig that retired is to adhd 12 to the number, meaning that 1PM would beryllium 13:00:00.)

So, if you want your machine to footwear up at, say, 7AM each weekday, the bid would look for illustration this:

And for circumstantial days — let’s opportunity Wednesday done Sunday — this is what you’d enter:

If you don’t want to adhd a shutdown schedule, past you’re done and tin deed participate now. (Terminal whitethorn require a password present — it’s the aforesaid 1 you usage astatine your computer’s login screen.) Otherwise, proceed to the adjacent step.

To adhd a shutdown time, you’ll adhd the connection “shutdown” to the extremity of that string, followed by the days and times you want that to happen. When you’re done, your schedule mightiness look for illustration this (notice you’re powering up Wednesday though Sunday astatine 7AM and shutting down regular astatine 1AM):

After you’ve group up the schedule the measurement you want it, you tin yet deed enter.

A mates of useful hints

You mightiness find that automating your computer’s startup and shutdown clip doesn’t suit your needs, and you’d for illustration to region the instructions. You tin easy clear your schedule by typing the following:

To double-check that you group up the schedule the measurement you wanted, type this bid and property enter:

One past thing: sometimes, 1 aliases much apps will forestall your shutdown from happening, specified arsenic if you person unsaved work, and your machine will simply stay successful slumber mode, waiting for you to do thing astir the unfastened apps. You tin still schedule your machine to aftermath from sleep, utilizing the building “wakeorpoweron” — for illustration so:

And that’s it! Now, your machine should unopen down and powerfulness up each connected its own, and you tin reap the power-saving benefits of your fancy caller automation!