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Check How Long Your Mac Has Been On with uptime

See the time since your Mac's last restart plus system load in one short terminal command.

macOSDiagnosticsuptimeLow risk
Run uptime and read the 'up X days' part of the output to see how long the Mac has run since its last restart.

01Command

Command
$ uptime

02What it does

uptime prints the current time, how long the system has been awake since the last boot, the number of terminal users, and three load averages. Macs that sleep instead of shutting down accumulate weeks of uptime, and memory leaks or stuck background processes often explain sluggishness — a restart clears them. The load averages (three numbers at the end) roughly indicate how busy the CPU has been over the last 1, 5, and 15 minutes.

03Risk

RiskLow risk

04Undo

✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.

05Sources

  • UPTIME(1) - macOS manual page
    Apple (Xcode man pages mirror) · vendor-doc · 2026-09-17
    Evidence: The manual page states uptime displays the current time, how long the system has been running, and the number of users and load averages.
  • uptime - How long the system has been running
    SS64 · technical · 2026-09-17
    Evidence: Documents the uptime command as showing how long the system has been running, plus the current time and load averages.

Last verified: 2026-09-19 · Category: System & Settings

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