Always boot Mac OS X in Verbose Mode

Booting Mac OS X is attractive and all, but some users would prefer to see what’s going on behind the scenes. Verbose mode shows you what is really happening during system startup, and is great for troubleshooting. Typically if you wanted to boot in verbose mode you would hit Command-V during startup, which brings up the familiar white on black console. If you’d prefer to always see the system messages on boot, you can adjust the firmware from the Terminal with the nvram command.


To turn on Verbose booting, at the Terminal type the following:
sudo nvram boot-args="-v"

Disabling Verbose booting is just as easy:
sudo nvram boot-args=

If you’re curious what the current firmware nvram settings are, type the following:
nvram -p

Again, if you just want to boot into verbose mode once, hold the following keys on system boot:
Command+V

Related Posts with Thumbnails

14 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. hmills says:

    I would rather just hit command-v when necessary, I prefer the bells & whistles of a nice spunky graphic splash to some scrolling greek text

  2. anon says:

    For those who want to exercise geekdom without satiating their true inner geek, you can do this and a lot of other stuff using a gui util like OnyX. But this is, of course, “funner.”

  3. [...] Want to always start in Verbose mode? Check out this article [...]

  4. [...] Always boot Mac OS X in Verbose Mode – OS X Daily (tags: mac boot verbose osx computer howto bash apple) [...]

  5. gp says:

    Do you know how to disable the verbose mode definetely? I have activated it on a mb late 2008, and now I cannot disable it anymore… how can I do that?

    thanks
    Kind Regards
    gp

  6. george beard says:

    hi. i have a macbook laptop 2006 13-inch screen……. and i lost my login password plus i lost my startup disc to…. it is anyone there can probably know what to do please help me i do not what to do thank you very much

  7. lol says:

    A statistic:

    Only 1 in 10 dumb americans can spell “definItely” correctly.

  8. veonexus says:

    When correcting others’ grammatical errors, please be sure that your response is correct. Americans is a proper noun so it should be capitalized.

  9. wiltj says:

    could i use this command to reset the PRAM from first boot, as i understand it, setting something like
    sudo nvram boot-args=”-p -r”

    should reset the PRAM, and then would allow the system to boot normally( as the command would wipe its self out)

    why i ask?
    my mini no longer lets me reset PRAM from either a wired, or a wireless keyboard.(target disk mode works, option boot wont)
    but all keys work fine once the OS is booted. :( any help please!
    -w

  10. [...] MIGHT be it: Always boot Mac OS X in Verbose Mode – OS X Daily [...]

  11. Ben Martin says:

    Just what I needed. Thanks!

  12. Pie says:

    ok i type -v NOT -V does that matter?
    after some scrolling text the screen goes black but my PC is still running cause it has the light on and i can here it like usually. whats going on here?

Leave a Reply

 

Save big on Apple & Mac Deals from Amazon.com

Recent Comments

Shared on Facebook

Support Us

Mac Picks

iPhone & iPad Picks

Mac from PC Picks