How to make your Mac automatically start up, sleep and shut down

If you're tired of your Mac not being ready when you are in the morning, or if you want to save electricity, you can set your Mac to start up and shut down on demand.

As power efficient as modern Macs have become, it's still a waste of electricity to have a Mac operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if you don't need to. That's why Apple's built in some wake, sleep, start up and shut down features right into the Energy Saver system preferences.

To set your Mac to automatically wake up and shut down

1. Hold down the command key and press the space bar to open Spotlight.
2. Type "Energy Saver" and select the Energy Saver system preference. That will automatically open it. Alternately, you can click on the  menu, select System Preferences... and click on Energy Saver.
3. Click on the Schedule... button.
4. Check Start up or wake, then select the frequency you'd like your Mac to start up. You can specify weekdays, weekends, every day, or a specific day of the week. A separate pop-up menu lets you specify what time you'd like it to wake or start.
5. Check the Sleep menu to specify a sleep time. You can change the end action to Restart or Shut down if you'd prefer. You can specify the same frequency with which you'd like the computer to shut down, restart or sleep, and specify a time.
6. When you're done, click the OK button to save changes.
7. Close the Energy Saver system preference when you're done.

That's it!