The Ghost Boot
macOS includes a deeply buried, legacy feature that allows you to automate your Mac’s power cycle. Designed originally for office environments, you can instruct a Mac to automatically turn itself on or wake from sleep at a specific time every morning, ensuring it is ready the moment you walk in. However, if you bought a second-hand Mac, or if you accidentally activated this feature while digging through terminal commands or third-party optimization apps, finding your computer running at 6:00 AM every single day can be alarming and a waste of electricity.
Cancelling the Wake Schedule
To keep your computer powered down until you physically press the button and stop macOS from automatically starting up on a schedule, you must clear the system’s power management schedule.
In older versions of macOS (Monterey and earlier), this was found in System Preferences > Energy Saver > Schedule. However, in macOS Ventura and Sonoma, Apple completely removed this graphical interface. If your modern Mac is turning itself on, you must use the terminal to clear the schedule. Open the Terminal app (found in Applications > Utilities). To see if a schedule exists, type pmset -g sched and press Enter. If you see an active boot schedule, you can wipe it completely by typing sudo pmset repeat cancel and pressing Enter. (You will be prompted to type your administrator password; the characters won’t show on screen as you type). This command permanently deletes all scheduled startup, wake, and sleep events.