MacOS – Identify Cause of Restart on MacBook Air via Console App in OS X Yosemite

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Recently my MacBook Air restarted in the middle of the night and cost me some data.

I understand there is a support page that tells me the possible causes, but they don't include a way to find the cause.

Is there a way I can identify the cause of a reboot via the Console app?

Best Answer

Using the console

  1. Open Console app (by default located in Macintosh HD⁩ ▸ ⁨Applications⁩ ▸ ⁨Utilities⁩)
  2. Select the system.log file in the left pane
  3. Conduct a search for Shutdown Cause
  4. View the filtered output

See Yosemite example below:

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NOTE: For more context, you may want to search for Shutdown only to see some of the other log entries and not just the Shutdown cause.

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