MacBook Tip: How To Disable Auto Booting

Some newer MacBooks have the feature to immediately boot up without the user pressing any button. Disabling this feature is possible but is not easily available through the Mac’s settings menus. Here’s a quick way to disable the MacBooks auto boot feature.

Disabling Auto Boot

The auto boot feature is currently automatically turned on for 13-inch, and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops made from 2016 onwards. This feature is also loaded onto 16-inch MacBook Pros from 2019 until this year and MacBook Air laptops that were produced in 2018 up until this year. MacBook owners who bought their units on these years may have experienced headaches with this feature around.

If left on its own, the feature could boot up the Mac accidentally at unneeded times and could drain the battery without the owner’s knowledge. To disable the feature, users will have to open the Terminal app in the Applications folder in their Mac.

Users would need to type in “sudo nvram AutoBoot=%00” in the Terminal app and hit Enter. The Mac will now ask for the computer’s password. Similar to logging in to online e-mails, the password will not be shown up front when typing each of the password characters in.

Once that’s done, the Auto Boot feature is now disabled for good and will have to woken up with a held down Touch ID button for several seconds. The MacBook and the MacBook Air laptops tweaked with this command will now behave like most regular laptops in the market when it comes booting.

Reactivating Auto Boot

If needed the Auto Boot feature can also be turned on again if the NVRAM is reset. Alternatively, a non-reset option is also available and will need to type another command into the Terminal app again. Type in “sudo nvram AutoBoot=%03” and hit Enter to resume using the Auto Boot feature again. If does not work, the NVRAM needs to be reset thoroughly. The instructions on resetting NVRAM and navigating the reset menus are available on Apple’s official site if need be.