Do we want our Mac to turn on and off by itself? Let’s see how to program restart, power on and automatic shutdown
Macs are decidedly elegant and powerful computers but they also hide hidden functions that can help users in the office or at home; among the lesser-known functions of the Mac, the autostart modulewhich can turn your Mac on and off at precise times without human intervention, as long as the Mac is connected to the power outlet.
This system can be exploited to start up your Mac a few minutes before arriving at the office, so you can immediately start working without waiting for the boot (however very fast on today’s Macs). Conversely we can use this function for automatically shut down your Mac after a certain timeso you no longer have to manually shut down your Mac or go back to check if your Mac is on or not.
READ ALSO -> Automatic or manual Mac updates
1) Turn on your Mac automatically
To turn your Mac on and off automatically, simply press the bitten apple symbol at the top left, click on the menu System Preferencesopen the menu Energy saving and finally take us to the menu Plan present on the left side.
To set the Mac to start automatically, check the item Start or restartwe choose which days of the week to start (we can also leave Everyday to always turn on the Mac by itself), choose a start time and finally press on Apply for the changes to take effect.
From now on, the Mac will always be ready at the indicated time: we will be greeted directly from the login screen, without further waiting. If we had left the Mac in Sleep mode, this programming will wake up the Mac, waking it up from its hibernation state just in time to start working.
2) Restart your Mac at regular intervals
If we have the habit of always leaving the Mac on for work, we can set a scheduled restart once a week, so as to let updates install and clean the app cache without having to use dedicated cleaning apps or tools.
A restart every now and then is always good, for this reason we advise you to set it up on our always-on Mac, taking us back to the path System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Scheduleactivating the check mark on the item Stop (immediately under the command Startup or wake up), by pressing on the item Stop and choosing the item from the drop-down menu Restart.
To complete the programming, choose the day of the week to use for the restart (by pressing on Everyday to open the drop-down menu) and also choose the time at which this restart will be performed.
To confirm the changes, press the button at the bottom Apply; now the Mac will restart at regular intervals during the lunch break of the chosen day, so as not to disturb our work and have time to apply system updates and cache cleaning.
3) Shut down your Mac automatically
Taking advantage of the information seen so far, we can also set the automatic shutdown of the Mac, to be performed every time we leave the office (so as not to have to go back to check if it is off).
The procedure is the same seen for the automatic restart: let’s go to the path System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Schedulewe activate the check mark on the item Stoppress on it, make sure to set the option this time Switch off and finally press on Apply to make the changes effective.
4) Restart your Mac if the power goes out
If the electricity goes out and we are using the Mac remotely it may be impossible to start it again without being present in the office. Fortunately, the automatic ignition module also provides a very useful one powerless restart mode to be used every time the current goes out, but only if the Mac was already on at the time of the blackout.
To activate this function, go to the path System Preferences -> Energy Saverwe press on the menu Diet to the side and tick the voice Automatically start after a power failure.
In doing so, the Mac will always be ready for the next return of power and we will be able to work remotely without having to go back to the office to manually turn the Mac back on; to control the Mac remotely we can use AnyDesk or alternatively use one of the remote control apps seen in our ai guide best remote desktop programs.
Conclusions
Making the most of the remote ignition module we will have the Mac always ready to welcome us upon arrival at the office, thus skipping the start-up phase and taking us directly to the work desktop. By also scheduling the restart and automatic shutdown we will obtain other benefits, such as installing updates, cleaning the cache and we will be able to shut down the Mac automatically even when we are in a hurry.
If we want to automatically turn on a Windows PC we can read our guides to programs to manage automatic startup in Windows and your computer and about how turn on PC automatically after StandBy or suspend / hibernate.
