Determining Apple Mac Computer Usage from System Console Log Files

For labs, office environments, and public workspaces, it’s sometimes necessary to quantify computer usage for purposes of budgeting and planning.

The following steps (originally documented in 2011) can be used to pull usage data from the system log files on an Apple Mac computer.

1. Review the document “Preserving Apple Console System.log Events File for Usage Analysis – Preventing Turned Over Purged Erased Data” to ensure that your log files aren’t erased frequently.
2. Refer to the document “Using Apple Mac Console Event Log Files to Report Login and Logout Times for Calculating Computer Usage” to complete the reporting process.