How to set up your Mac mini to reboot without a monitor and keyboard

If you’re using your Mac mini as a headless server, you might have found that you cannot login using ssh or Screen Sharing after a reboot.

To overcome this, only reboot using the command sudo fdesetup authrestart

This will prompt you for the user to login with after reboot, but it won’t log in to the desktop.
It just shows the login screen on the Mac mini, but now you are able to remotely login to the Mac mini after a reboot without a monitor or keyboard attached.

# to reboot and have remote services accessible:
sudo fdesetup authrestart

# tip: make an alias of 'reboot'
echo 'alias reboot="sudo fdesetup authrestart"' >> ~/.zshenv 

# after re-login, you can now just type: reboot

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NG - 17/09/2025

Try this instead:

echo ‘alias reboot=”sudo fdesetup authrestart”‘ >> ~/.zshenv

– zsh replaced bash several versions ago.
– You forgot to use `alias`.

To other readers: this affects the behavior of FileVault, which can affect the default security policy of your system. See `man fdesetup` for more details.

Reminder: this only works for interactive shells.

Reply
    Paul Edenburg - 18/09/2025

    Thanks! I updated the post 👍

    Reply
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