How to Schedule Boot / Turn On, Shutdown, Wake / Sleep on MacOS Ventura
Scheduling a Mac to boot, sleep, and shutdown, have been longstanding features in the Energy preference panel on Mac OS since the beginning of the operating system, so if you updated to macOS Ventura and now you’re wondering where those settings went, you aren’t alone. You can still schedule a Mac to turn on and shutdown on a schedule, but how it’s accomplished is different from before.
Where is the Energy Saver preference panel in macOS Ventura?
If you’re a longtime Mac user you may have become accustomed to using the Energy Saver preference panel to perform many common power related actions, like scheduling boot, wake, sleep, shutdown, and more.
For whatever reason, Apple removed the Energy Saver preference panel from macOS Ventura System Settings. Thus if you were hoping for the longstanding simple graphical interface to adjust and schedule your sleep, wake, shutdowns, and boots, there’s no such option in macOS Ventura. But, those actions are still possible to trigger using a different approach.
Instead, in macOS Ventura, you can perform scheduling of power functions by using the command line and pmset command.
How to Schedule Mac to Boot/Shutdown & Wake/Sleep in MacOS Ventura
You’ll now have to use the command line and pmset commands to schedule sleeping, waking, and shutting down on the Mac. Why Apple has decided to relegate basic booting and energy usage features into the Terminal is a mystery, but if you’re comfortable with the command line, 24 hour time, you’ll be able to set your Mac to wake, boot, and shut down on schedule just as before.
To get started, launch the Terminal from Spotlight by hitting Command+Spacebar, typing “Terminal” and hitting return.
Learning pmset Date & Time Formatting
pmset uses 24 hour time, and you can specify days, dates, and time down to the second, using the format MTWRFSU for days of the week and MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS for specific dates and times.
For example for December 25 2025 at 8:30am you would use the following format 12/25/25 08:30:00.
Or for every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at 6 PM, you would use MWF 18:00:00.
Now that we understand how date and time is entered into pmset, let’s learn how to schedule a Mac to wake/boot, shutdown, view current settings, and how to remove any active settings from pmset.
Schedule Mac to Power On or Wake
Schedule a Mac to wake up or boot up Monday-Friday at 8am:
pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRF 8:00:00
Schedule Mac to Shutdown
Scheduling a Mac to shut down every Monday through Friday at 8pm:
pmset repeat shutdown MTWRF 20:00:00
View Currently Active pmset Settings
To see the currently active settings with pmset, use the following command:
pmset -g
Remove All Prior Scheduling on the Mac
To remove any currently active scheduling for the Mac to power on / boot, sleep / wake, or shut down, use the following command syntax:
sudo pmset repeat cancel
Hit return to execute the command as usual. Using sudo requires entering the admin password.
The pmset command is quite powerful and offers a wide range of other useful capabilities, including enabling and disabling low power mode via the Terminal, getting battery remaining info at the command line, and much more, it’s a powerful command line tool.
Why Apple has mysteriously removed the easy to use Energy Saver options for automatically booting and shutting down Macs from the new and improved macOS Ventura System Settings overhaul is a bit of mystery, but fortunately the command line pmset tool allows us to perform these actions, even without the friendly and easy to use graphical user interface that many users were long accustomed to using for these functions.
What do you think of the removal of the Energy Saver preference panel from MacOS Ventura? What do you think of using the command line to perform energy saver tasks and to schedule boot/wake/sleep/shutdown on a Mac? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
I’ve got a home server Mac mini that had a scheduled sleep from prior OS releases to happen at midnight each day. This disrupts any media I am trying to watch at the time obviously.
I’ve tried sudo pmset repeat cancel and any other Terminal removal command I’ve seen on this topic and nothing does anything to these repeating ‘power events.’
Just incredible.
Hello,
I write a GUI software to schedule your Mac like the OS before venture.
My site : http://bmaillard.free.fr/programmer/
Enjoy
So much for “The computer for the rest of us”.
I own both a PC and a MAC and I’m continually amazed at how hard it is to find how to do some things on the MAC. Part of the problem, IMHO, is that it’s macOS version dependent so if you find an answer with Google it worked with “that version” but not “your version”.
45 years in the computer industry, supported 7 OSs, installed 2,000 location networks, etc.., so it’s not that I don’t understand stuff it’s that Apple makes it hard to find simple answers to simple tasks.
Had to come here to find out you needed to put the boot and shut down in the same sudo pmset command line (yeah, that’s really Apple-like for the average consumer).
Like all mfgs, once a feature is gone they never put it back so the typical Apple user better start getting samilar with terminal!
Hello, with Ventura we lost the panel to schedule the start, wake and shutdown on our Mac. I write a little software to control PMSET with a graphic interface like before. It is free and you can download it (French or English) at http://bmaillard.free.fr/programmer/. Enjoy.
@Maillard, great little program. I applaud you for replacing what Apple has taken away from us.
2 points for improvement
1) If you select a startup and shutdown and configure it for daily usage you need to join the statements so that when you run a pmset -g sched you see a shutdown and a startup routine.
2) A cosmetic change. Under “Startup or wake” under schedule selection dropdown, “Everydays” is just “Everyday”. Under “Shutdown” it is spelt correctly.
Chapeau, c’est fabuleux. Merci
Thank for your message
I correct the point 2 but I dan’t understand point 1.
Thank you!
As an example, under the normal user ” not root ”
sudo pmset repeat shutdown MTWRFSU 18:00:00 wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 08:00:00
this wil shutdown the mac every day of the week at 18:00 hours, en startup every day at 08:00 hours..
enter the password and check then with pmset -g sched
good luck
Thank you !!
Thank you!! Exactly what I was hoping to find! I only removed the weekend days it works perfectly for the week days.
Thank you Bob, I was going mad setting this up. Every time I enter a shutdown setting it killed the startup setting.
Obvious really.
I was just looking for this today and discovered this ability disappeared. The idea that those of us who used this now may have a setting for this to happen in the system but no visual way to disable it seems like a pretty bad oversight.
Thanks for the clear instructions. Luckily I don’t need to change this right now but will likely end up here at some point in the future.
You can set BOTH. Just out them all in one line:
pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRFSU 08:00:00 shutdown MTWRFSU 00:15:00
after executing, hit: pmset -g sched
this will display schedule settings
Now I have trouble because the shutdown won’t work if the computer is not awake. Apparently the screen saver is enough to stop it. I have “sleep” off and “Lock Screen” never, but it still won’t shutdown. I tried to wake it just before it shuts down, but it won’t let me schedule a morning power on AND a wake just before the shutdown. Whatever I list second in the command is applied.
Hello Bob,
I entered the command as above, only my Mac mini will shut down at set time but will not wake up.
Any ideas? Thank you so much
A ridiculous and un-Apple decision, and absolutely confounding that they would do this… forcing everyday users into the Terminal. I can’t imagine why they would have made such a user-hostile move.
I HATE that Apple decided to remove the start-up shut-down feature!!!!!!
APPLE PLEASE REPLACE THIS FEATURE
I can program either a wake or shutdown, but iMac won’t let me add 2 repeating events, only one???
I cannot add both a shutdown and a wake as repeating events, only lets me add one????
I too, think Apple made a huge mistake in removing this feature. My iMac require me to “run as root” to shutdown, but not wake. Also, I cannot add both a shutdown and a wake as repeating events, only lets me add one????
Mac’s appeal for me has always been its intuitive user-friendliness, but now there seems to be a shift to the programmers trying to prove to their superiors how cool and sharp they can be, and screw the users. They’re playing to the in-crown at the office rather than to the people who are actually buying the products (and thus providing their paychecks). There can’t be any other reason for making things so difficult. Mac is still a better products than any Windows computer, but if there was a viable third option, I’d be exploring it right now.
I agree, it has lost its user-friendliness, and as a company, it seems to be losing its soul. I think that without SJ at the helm, it is a profoundly soulless, woke and extremely tactlessly unproductive company, making really poor software and hardware these days. Ventura is a mess of ideas now and it has many incompatibilities. I can only say that moving to a new Mac now has become a nightmare for me, and I’m really sorry, the entire experience of using my new Mac has been piss-poor, Ventura is really, truly a bad upgrade from what I was using previously (Catalina) and I cannot say anything positive about the Mac experience anymore. I am disgusted by their lack of insight and am sickened by their design decisions. Shame on you Apple
I hate this.
I do not like using the terminal command app.
Why Apple do this to us?
May I suggest emailing Apple about this deficiency, like I have, if you want it restored. If they hear from enough people, perhaps they’ll bring it back.
Go to apple.com/feedback
Thanks for the article. It didn’t work for me. Something about being a “root” user. So then what do I do? I have been using macs since the Mac LCIII. This is just awful. If I wanted to use Terminal and have things like DOS I would have used PCs all these years.
Google set up root user and go from there. I tried sudo pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRF 8:00:00 and this appeared to work but it seems that you can use sleep or wake but not both.
Caveat – I am not a command-line user soo take the above with a grain of salt.
Apple missed the boat on this one. I work split shifts and when I come home in the morning I like to have everything ready. At night I may forget to shut down.
Funnily enough, I just had to do this for a friend who just bought a new macbook pro. I’ve been using macs since “tiger” and can do everything I need to from the command line, but I was stumped when it came to finding an easy way to show him how to do it himself. It makes me wonder if this feature-set is going to be phased out or quietly removed in future.
I get the feeling Apple is relying on most new users simply not knowing about it, and what they don’t know, they won’t miss.
I think it’s the other way; their new developer staff are young and didn’t grow up with Macs, they grew up with iPhones and iPads instead… so they are taking away features that lifelong Mac users have relied on.
The old guard at Apple is being phased out, like at most tech companies, because older senior employees are more expensive and are set in their ways with ‘old’ and ‘mature’ ideas. With the Mac, that is perfect, it’s a refined mature platform and needs to “Just Work”, but they’re stuffing the younger generation onto it whose first Apple device was an iPhone rather than a Mac, and…. well, we see how that’s turning out.
Couldn’t agree more.
Product Mgmt at many tech companies has shifted to “fast” “quick turnover” ideas; the “manager” grew up believing “buy it and throw it away” mentality is a reasonable solution. It’s not. In the mean time, we’ll pay the price for it.
I hate this. I do not like using the terminal command app. Why in the world would Apple do this to us?
Then get a PC. They have GUIs for that.
Gee, thanks for that. I guess you’re university material
I agree, it has lost its user-friendliness, and as a company, it seems to be losing its soul. I think that without SJ at the helm, it is a profoundly soulless, woke and extremely tactlessly unproductive company, making really poor software and hardware these days. Ventura is a mess of ideas now and it has many incompatibilities. I can only say that moving to a new Mac now has become a nightmare for me, and I’m really sorry, the entire experience of using my new Mac has been piss-poor, Ventura is really, truly a bad upgrade from what I was using previously (Catalina) and I cannot say anything positive about the Mac experience anymore. I am disgusted by their lack of insight and am sickened by their design decisions. Shame on you Apple
Great article, but one thing it doesnt mention is that you need to run the pmset command as a “root” user if you want to do things like a scheduled poweron automatically every day.