My Mac Did Not Power On

If your Mac does not wake up or power on at the expected time, you need to check the log.

Use Console.app application to view your system.log file. Look for lines mentioning the IOPMQueue.

IOPMQueue is part of macOS and is responsible for waking up and powering on your Mac to a schedule. Prior to macOS 13, this was the same system that the Energy Saver panel within System Preference.app uses.

Can you find a line mentioning your expected power event?

Reproduce the Problem

Try the following to reproduce the problem:

  1. Using Power Manager, create a new power on event due in 10 minutes time.

  2. Check the event appears in Power Manager’s status menu bar.

  3. Check the log to see if the IOPMQueue entry appears as expected.

  4. Launch the Terminal: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

    Use the pmset command to list your Mac’s pending hardware power events; see Listing IOPMQueue events with pmset below.

  5. If the expected event is listed, shut down and wait 15 minutes.

  6. Did your Mac power on?

Listing IOPMQueue events with pmset

Open in Script Editor
pmset -g sched

If your Mac did not power on as expected, repeat the test using Apple’s pmset tool or the Energy Saver panel within System Preference.app. If neither tool can power on your Mac, we recommend contacting Apple Support.

Potential Causes

To power on automatically, the Mac must:

Modern Mac laptops can not automatically power on when they are disconnected from main power. Is your Mac running on the battery when the power event is due to occur?

Some older editions of macOS require at least two minutes between the power event being scheduled, and the power event being due.