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!
