I'm new to KM and I'm trying to figure out how to wake my MacBook to login

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hi - I'm been playing around with KM and I can't seem to figure out how to wake my MacBook and login using KM. I built a simple script to update Quicken on a daily bases, although I'm stumped on the waking and logging in part. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

2

Welcome to Keyboard Maestro :).

If you're not logged in, you can't run a Keyboard Maestro macro. There are triggers that will make things happen after you wake or login, but Keyboard Maestro cannot do the wake or login itself.

If you have another Mac, you could use it to wake the first Mac, which could then trigger a macro using the Wake Trigger. (I say this in theory, never having tried it.)

-rob.

3

Is the problem you are trying to solve
either
a: how do I use KM to wake my macbook up in the morning?
or
b: When I start work at say 0800 or 0900 or 1000, the first thing I want the mac to do is update my quicken spreadsheet and only do this once a day?

4

Hi Jonathon - The question is how to use KM to wake my MacBook and log in. Thx

5

Thanks for the quick reply. Guess it's not going to work then.. thx

6

Waking can be done remotely (via the "wake on LAN" feature) without even using Keyboard Maestro. But I've never heard of any way to do automatic login, short of having an account set up to do that ... and given you have your Quicken data there, I don't think you want to do that (it may not even be possible any more; I haven't checked in a long time).

-rob.

7

Thanks for the quick feedback Rob!

8

Not tried this, but.... You can use the pmset command line utility in Terminal to schedule specific times for your Mac to start up, sleep, restart or shut down. You can do this if you want to make sure your Mac turns on before you come to work and turns off when you aren’t working.

  1. Go to the Terminal app on your Mac.
  2. Enter a pmset command.See the pmset man page for the list of commands you can use. For example, try any of the following:
  • pmset -g sched: See the current schedule.
  • sudo pmset repeat wake M 8:00:00: Schedule your Mac to wake at 8:00 am every Monday.
  • sudo pmset repeat cancel: Cancel the current schedule.
  1. Press Return.
    Source: Schedule your Mac to turn on or off in Terminal – Apple Support (UK)

and from 2013

However, I think this
will only get you to the login page..

9

I'm confused. Why not just schedule it in MacOS Energy saver panel?

2 Likes
10

Apple removed the Energy Saver panel when they converted System Preferences to System Settings. But the energy saving settings are still accessible via the command line.

1 Like
11

Ah well. That's on me then. Now I feel stupid. Hah hah!
I am reading the forums on my soon to be retired Catalina system.
I didn't realize they had removed it.

12

The question is -- do you have to log in? Do you actually log out or is your screen simply locked?

If it is just locked then you might be able to do what you want, so long as your macro doesn't have UI actions. So you'd use the above pmset commands to set your wake time and have the macro trigger on wake.

13

At the risk of sidetracking the thread, is there an easy way, with or without KM, to send a wake on lan packet from an M-series Mac? I used small utility on my previous Intel based Mac, but I hasn’t been updated for M-series, it seems.

14

I haven't done this for quite a while, but I used this freebie (installed via Homebrew):

Keep in mind that you have to be connected via Ethernet for WOL to work.

-rob.

1 Like