Date and time sync failure

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Level 1

13 points

Date and time sync failure

The time (and potentially date) on my MacBook Pro (Sonoma 14.2.1) has started playing up. This morning when I went to it, I had some trouble starting it after opening the lid. When I was able to begin using it, the time was well and truly out. I turned off auto-sync, turned it back on, and it synced. By late afternoon, the time was slower than reality by about 10 minutes. Anything to do with closure of the lid?

BTW, it's very awkward method of having to turn off and turn back on the auto-sync to fix the time, instead of a simple "sync now" button (I suppose that shouldn't really be necessary though, right?). How often should it be syncing the time? And, what time servers are available?

Posted on Jan 24, 2024 11:30 PM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

200,322 points

Jan 25, 2024 11:03 AM in response to ambience22

ambience22 wrote:

The time (and potentially date) on my MacBook Pro (Sonoma 14.2.1) has started playing up.

This morning when I went to it, I had some trouble starting it after opening the lid. When I was able to begin using it, the time was well and truly out.

The current stable release of Sonoma including bug fixes, security updates is macOS 14.3

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support

If you have an issue date and time—

from the Terminal.app copy & paste:

sudo rm /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist

this will remove the corrupt plist, reboot and compare your results

(note—your psswd will not echo on screen, type it in any way use the enter\return key to proceed.)

Alternatively from >System Settings turn off "Automatic" in Date & Time and set manually. No harm there.

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Answer 2

ambience22 Author

Level 1

13 points

Feb 4, 2024 1:00 AM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks for that response. Haven't experienced any problems up until now.

A few things:

1 The system is set to notify me of available updates. Could the time problem have affected that function, failing to notify me? (Or had I simply forgotten I had been notified?) Anyway, I updated it when you posted.

2 I have just performed the suggested Terminal app action, I'm yet to notice anything different.

3 Power plays up still, which had been the subject of another of my support posts. This morning (just over 12 hours ago), it was at 1% after being closed overnight. So I've been paying attention to the clock since then. (I suspect it could be a particular app causing that battery drainage, so I'll muck around with that to verify.)

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Date and time sync failure

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