How To: Mac Auto Restart After Freezing

Even though Macs don’t freeze often, it might be best practice to force your Mac to auto-reboot should it freeze down the road. Set Restart on Freeze might be beneficial if you run a Mac X server and it suddenly freezes – having it reboot itself to bring it back to life and your server services instantly.

This option is the same as Energy Saver – start up automatically after a power failure – explained below.

Set Your Mac to Auto Reboot After Freezing

1. Open Terminal (Hard Drive -> Applications ->Utilities)

2. To enable Restart on Freeze type:

sudo systemsetup -setrestartfreeze on

3. To disable Restart on Freeze type:

sudo systemsetup -setrestartfreeze off

4. To see Restart on Freeze status type:

sudo systemsetup –getrestartfreeze

Energy Saver – Start up Automatically After a Power Failure

As mentioned, there actually is a GUI checkbox in Systems Preferences to reboot after a freeze. This is the same option as we did in Terminal, however not all versions of Mac X have start up automatically after a power failure option.

System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Start Up Automatically After a Power Failure