Schedule a Mac to wake or sleep automatically on a recurring daily/weekly schedule using pmset
domain: developer.apple.com · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Use `sudo pmset repeat` (not `schedule`, which is for one-time events) to set up recurring daily/weekly power events.
Specify the event type (sleep, wake, poweron, shutdown, or wakeorpoweron), then the weekday set (a subset of MTWRFSU, or a keyword like weekdays/weekends/everyday), then the time in 24-hour HH:mm:ss format.
Set at most one repeating power-on-type event and one power-off-type event at a time; pmset supports only one pair of repeating events.
Verify configured events with `pmset -g sched`, which lists currently scheduled and repeating power events.
Clear a repeating schedule with `sudo pmset repeat cancel`, and clear a one-time schedule with `sudo pmset schedule cancel ...` (or cancelall), when the automation is no longer needed.
Known gotchas
pmset schedule and pmset repeat are different subcommands for different purposes (one-time vs recurring events); mixing them up is a common scripting mistake.
Scheduled wake/poweron behavior can depend on the Mac's power state and hardware (fully shut down vs asleep, battery vs AC on laptops), so verify actual behavior on the target hardware rather than assuming the schedule always fires.
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