I raised an apple support case for this. We repeated the steps and they grabbed the logs. After the case was escalated they instructed me to run this command from the terminal. sudo mv /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist ~/Destop ; sudo reboot Now when I set the date and time automatically from the system preferences it sets the correct date and time as expected. Hopefully this simple trick might help others. I saw this from this forum: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253909330

I have the same issue after my MacOS Sonoma 14.1.2 battery drained to 0%. This solution worked for me: Disable "Set Time and Date Automatically" from the system settings. Run the following command in the terminal: sudo mv /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist ~/Desktop ; sudo reboot After rebooting, re-enable "Set Time and Date Automatically."

From terminal:

sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com

macOS Catalina:

sudo sntp -sS pool.ntp.org

NTPd (used by Mac OSX) will sync at the speed it thinks is more appropriate - that depends on your clock skew. It will be more frequent when you first turn it on / connect to the net and then will connect at longer intervals when it has stabilized your clock enough.

It does not only sync your current time and date, but also sync the actual clock speed. That means that after some time that you have enabled it (and are connected to the internet) your clock will be very precise even if you stay disconnected from the 'net for long times.

If you want the gory details, head on to wikipedia and to the NTP site.

You can define a minpoll and maxpoll time in /etc/ntp.conf. Usually the poll time is auto-adjusted by ntpd depending on some complex algorithms.

The default minpoll and maxpoll time (without specifying minpoll/maxpoll in ntp.conf) should be 6 (64 s) and 10 (1,024 s). By adding minpoll/maxpoll entries and values to ntp.conf you may force different update sequences. The values are seconds as a power of two and the allowed integer values are [3...17]. The minimal poll time is then 8 seconds and the maximal poll time is 36.4 h. You have to reboot the system or force quit ntpd with kill ... in the Terminal or in the Activity Monitor after changing the config file to apply the modifications. The ntp daemon will be relaunched automatically after killing it.

Here is an already modified example ntp.conf with a poll time between 1024 and 4096 seconds:

...
server 160.45.10.8 minpoll 10 maxpoll 12
server 192.53.103.104 minpoll 10 maxpoll 12
server de.pool.ntp.org minpoll 10 maxpoll 12

Screenshot of the ntp traffic after changing the default config file without minpoll/maxpoll to the above example 16 minutes ago and reverting it after another 12 minutes to the original state:

The default poll time of 6 is clearly visible in the above screenshot with an update sequence of ca. 1 minute in the first 14 minutes and the last 4 minutes.

Using lower poll times [3..5] (= 8 seconds to 32 seconds) doesn't necessarily mean that the time is more accurate! Due to the extended calculations made by ntpd the time adjustments may oscillate and more inaccurate results may occur than with higher poll times (≥6).

After a system update/upgrade you may have to readjust/restore the modified config file!

As mentioned in the University of Oxford's page on NTP the ntpX.ox.ac.uk servers are "available to any Oxford IPv4 host" - so not accessible from other machines on the general Internet.

It is suggested that you use an NTP pool machine e.g. If you want a UK based NTP server:

sudo sntp -sS 1.uk.pool.ntp.org