macOS: How to See Your Mac Wake History

If you’ve ever wanted to see your Mac wake history, check out this Terminal command. It lists all of the times your Mac has been woken up from sleep in chronological order.

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Mac Wake History

Open Terminal and copy/paste the following command:

log show --style syslog | fgrep "Wake reason: EC.LidOpen"

It will take a little while, but it will show you your Mac wake history, and it will probably be a big list. But why is this useful?

Why It Matters

This tip was inspired by Patrick Wardle’s new tool called Do Not Disturb. It’s an app that does the same thing as this command, but it goes further. Do Not Disturb “continually monitors your system for events that may indicate a precursor of “evil maid” attack. Specifically it watches for ‘lid open’ events.”

So what is an evil maid attack? Basically it’s when a person access your unattended computer and tries to install malware, such as a bootkit. Do Not Disturb has a companion iOS app that sends you an alert the instant someone open’s your laptop lid. However, it’s a US$10/year subscription.

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