Prior to macOS Ventura , macOS has a wake , sleep , inauguration , and closedown scheduling creature progress in , located in System Preferences > Energy Saver , or if you are on a MacBook , System Preferences > Battery .
If you want to flip on a agenda so that your Mac would shut down every Nox and start up every morning at a certain time , then you could do this easily :
Apple only lets you schedule two natural process : a time to “ Start up or wake , ” which brings a Mac back to animation whether it ’s powered down or in slumber mode ; and Sleep , Restart , or Shut Down . you could pick out to have the action at law happen at a set time daily , on weekdays , on weekends , or on a particular day of the week . alas , you ca n’t schedule more elaborate combination of options , such as re-start every Sunday night and shutting down at 6 p.m. during the week .
The Schedule option in Battery or Energy Saver lets you set a recurring timer to startup or wake and shut down or sleep your Mac.
We ’ll explicate how to do that below .
How to schedule a Mac to turn off and on in Monterey and earlier
How to schedule a Mac to turn off and on in Ventura
Doing the same inVenturais a little more complicated because Apple has removed the programing options . You may be hunting for them and sham that it ’s just that System Preferences is nowSystem Settingsand everything has change – but the selection is no longer there .
But all is not lost . It is still possible to schedule your Mac to reverse on and off , you just have to use Terminal . So this one is for the pros .
For more advice about how to do this consultApple ’s support page .
We also coverHow to hold back your Mac kip when the lid is closedseparately .
Should you turn your Mac on and off
This is an interesting question we address here : Should I shut down my Mac every night?Our advice is yes you should , although not necessarily every dark . Shutting down mean your Mac ’s RAM will clear , among other things . Plus it will salvage your electricity bill .
But your Macs will still ‘ Sleep ’ even if you do n’t shut it down . Macs have many feature article to reduce wear and tear on their home components when they ’re not in active purpose . Hard ride birl down , components go to sleep — a Mac laptop might even introduce a hibernation modality that uses less energy than the normal sleep modality .
However , powering down your Mac completely always uses less free energy and incurs less wear than have power flowing through , particularly with desktop units , which have to wield a minimum current to restore their state from quietus .
Even if you do n’t want your Mac to power down , you might want it to sleep without having to invoke that mode if you entrust the computer without feature it configure to do so in the Power survey ( Energy Saver predilection pane ) or Battery and Power Adapter views ( Battery orientation dot ) .
We also break away throughHow to shut down a MacBook or Mac .
Ask Mac 911
We ’ve collect a inclination of the questions we get asked most frequently , along with reply and links to tower : read our super FAQ to see if your question is cover . If not , we ’re always looking for newfangled problems to solve ! Email yours tomac911@macworld.com , including screen captures as appropriate and whether you desire your full name used . Not every interrogation will be answered , we do n’t reply to email , and we can not provide direct troubleshooting advice .