How to disable auto power on for an Apple MacBook

5 min read

While the auto power on feature built into all Apple Silicon MacBooks can initially seem very useful. Having your computer power on when you open the lid or connect a power supply, can be very annoying. Particularly if you are simply looking to clean or charge your computer over night.

So it’s Lucky that Apple have acknowledged that not everyone what’s to leave their computer on all the time and have provided us with a way to disable auto power on. However, as we will have to type a command into the terminal, this video demonstrates what you need to do.

Note: If you don’t feel comfortable entering Terminal commands. We recommend that you book an appointment with an Apple Genius, and have them do the following for you. As always, make sure you have a backup of all your data before you attempt to use any of these commands.

Note: If on your computer, your user account does not have administrators privileges. When in the Terminal, you will first need to elevate its access privileges. This is done as follows.

Locate and click on Spotlight Search.
Search for Terminal and press Enter on your keyboard.
At the command prompt type:

su [administrator]

Note: Do not type the brackets and just use the user name for an account with administrators privileges over your computer.

After pressing Enter, You will be prompted to enter a password.
Type the password for the administrators account to your computer.

Note: When you type a password into the terminal, there will be no indicator to signify that you have typed a password.

Press Enter on your keyboard.
You will know that you have given your Terminal session elevated admin rights, as the user account name before the command prompt will have changed.

At the command prompt type:

sudo nvram BootPreference=%01

When you press Enter on the keyboard you will be prompted to enter the administrators password to your computer.
After entering the password, press the Enter key on your keyboard.
This will disable auto boot when you open the lid on your laptop.

At the command prompt type:

sudo nvram BootPreference=%02

When you press Enter on the keyboard you will be prompted to enter the administrators password to your computer.
After entering the password, press the Enter key on your keyboard.
This will disable auto boot when you plug in a power supply into your laptop.

At the command prompt type:

sudo nvram BootPreference=%00

When you press Enter on the keyboard you will be prompted to enter the administrators password to your computer.
After entering the password, press the Enter key on your keyboard.
This will disable auto boot when you either plug in a power supply or open the lid of your laptop.

At the command prompt type:

sudo nvram -d BootPreference

When you press Enter on the keyboard you will be prompted to enter the administrators password to your computer.
The auto power on feature will now be returned to its defaults.

Note: As you will be editing your MacBooks core system settings. It’s possible that something might go wrong. If that is the case, then your Mac may not boot and it will ask to revive or reinstall its firmware. It’s worth noting that in order to do this you will need a second Apple Mac computer.

mydoodads article – How to change how the macOS terminal windows exits.
Apple article – How to revive or restore Mac firmware.
mydoodads article – How to disable the startup chime on an Apple Macintosh computer.

Apple article – Prevent a Mac laptop from turning on when opening its lid or connecting to a power source.

How to disable auto power on for an Apple MacBook

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