Keep your Mac awake, on your terms, with smart triggers, presets, timed sessions, and closed-display mode in a clean, native menu-bar app, built on a modern foundation for the next decade of computing.
Keepresso is a native Swift + SwiftUI menu-bar app. It uses macOS power
assertions (IOPMAssertion) to prevent system and display sleep, and layers on
condition-based triggers so your Mac only stays awake when it actually should.
It lives quietly in the menu bar, no Dock icon, no clutter.
- ☕ Keep awake, your way. Prevent system sleep and/or display sleep as independent toggles, indefinitely, for a timed session (presets or any custom duration), or until a wall-clock time ("until 18:00", today or tomorrow).
- 🌙 Yield the screen saver. Let the screen saver or display sleep kick in after N minutes idle while the system itself stays awake.
- 🟢 Keep me active (defeat idle detectors). A plain power assertion keeps the Mac awake but doesn't reset app-level or enterprise idle detection. Optionally tell macOS you're active too, so remote-desktop and VDI sessions, meeting presence (Teams, Slack), and corporate idle-logout don't mark you away. It only steps in once you've been idle a few seconds, so it never nudges the pointer while you're using the Mac or gaming. Off by default, and prompt-free (no Accessibility permission).
- ⚡ Trigger engine. Stay awake only while charging or on battery, an external display is connected, you're on a chosen Wi-Fi network, a VPN is connected, the camera or microphone is in use, audio is playing, a chosen Bluetooth device is connected (headphones, a controller), a calendar event is in progress, a specific app or process is running, a chosen volume is mounted, CPU usage sits above a threshold (builds, renders, training runs), network throughput stays above a threshold (a large download, upload, or sync), a download is in progress in a folder you choose (keep awake until it finishes), a game is in front, or during a scheduled time window (weekdays 9:00-18:00, overnight hours). Combine conditions with any (OR) or all (AND). A one-click "Pause Triggers" in the menu bar stops brewing without touching your rules.
- 🤖 Agent-aware. The "AI agent is working" condition keeps the Mac awake while a coding agent (claude, codex, gemini, grok, aider, goose, and friends) is actually working, and lets it sleep once every session goes quiet, after a grace you choose. Agents that stream a transcript to disk prove their work directly, even through long zero-CPU network waits; the rest are judged on the CPU of their processes and tool calls against each session's own learned idle level. Claude Code can report its state exactly, via an opt-in hook integration you install in one click: a session is working when Claude says it is, a pending permission prompt counts as working (so the Mac waits for your answer), and background subagents count too. The menu lists every session with a live working / idle state and where it runs.
- ⏹️ Stop in 15, one click. A row of quick "Stop in" buttons (15 min, 30 min, 1 h out of the box, editable) turns a running session into a timed one, so the Mac goes back to sleeping on its own without you remembering to toggle off. Optionally get a heads-up a few minutes before any timed session ends.
- 🎥 Never sleeps mid-meeting. The camera/microphone conditions catch every meeting app at once, including calls running in a browser tab, and read only the device's in-use state (the green-dot signal), never the stream, so no camera or microphone permission is ever requested.
- 🎮 Game-aware. The "Playing a game" condition spots apps that declare a games category, anything running from a Steam library (many Steam games skip the declaration), and the cloud and game-streaming clients: GeForce NOW, Boosteroid, Parsec, Moonlight, Shadow. A five-minute grace means alt-tabbing to Discord doesn't drop the session. A controller condition counts any connected gamepad, DualSense, Xbox, and Steam Controller included (detected permission-free even though macOS reports it as a keyboard and mouse), and a Steam download condition holds the Mac awake while a game actually downloads, releasing when it finishes or you pause it. While you play, opt-in comforts keep the display awake during controller-only sessions and give the game high CPU priority through the administrator helper, restored when the bout ends.
- 📶 Gaming & Streaming Setup. macOS hops the Wi-Fi radio off-channel for AWDL (AirDrop, Handoff, Sidecar) about once a second, which shows up as 50-100 ms ping spikes mid-game or mid-stream. A dedicated window diagnoses it with a built-in jitter test, and fixes it with a session-scoped AWDL pause: no password at all with the administrator helper installed (once per launch without it), instant toggling, and everything restores itself the moment you stop (even after a crash). An automatic mode watches for a game (or a cloud-gaming app) on its own with no trigger setup, authorizes once up front so it never pops a password dialog over a running game, and shows a live status with a grace countdown when a game closes. Optional notifications when it pauses and resumes. Plus radio-hygiene checks: wired network, Wi-Fi channel alignment with AWDL's social channels (44 in the EU, 149 in the US and Canada), Bluetooth, Game Mode.
- 🎛️ Presets. Apply a named trigger bundle in one click, built-in (AI Agent, Gaming, Cloud Gaming, Meetings, Remote Control, On AC Power, External Display Connected, Remote Session (SSH), Backup Running, Media Render) or your own saved rule sets. Deleted a built-in? "Restore default presets" brings it back.
- 👋 First-run setup. A welcome window on a new Mac points out that Keepresso lives in the menu bar (no Dock icon) and sets you up in one click for how you work: agentic coding, gaming and streaming, meetings and calls, or remote access. Reopen it any time from Preferences.
- 🧩 Desktop widgets and a Control Center toggle. A small widget that's a one-tap toggle (the brand cup fills and steams while brewing, with a live countdown), a medium widget with Start/Stop and Pause/Resume Triggers buttons, and on macOS 26 a Keep Awake control for Control Center.
- 🔍 Awake explainer. The Activity pane shows every app's live power
assertions, a readable
pmset -g assertions, so you can see exactly what's preventing sleep (whoever's doing it), a seven-day held-awake summary, and a decision log of why each Keepresso session started or stopped that survives relaunch. The menu bar even names another app that's holding the Mac awake ("Held by Google Chrome") when Keepresso itself is idle. - 🪪 Auto app detection. Caffeinate while listed apps run or are frontmost, with an optional grace period before it lets go.
- 🔋 Battery-aware auto-pause. Let the Mac sleep once charge drops below a threshold you choose, even mid-session, so it never runs the battery flat.
- 🌡️ Thermal safety net. Holding a Mac awake through heavy load can also hold in the heat, so Keepresso can watch it: macOS's own thermal pressure (works on every Mac) or specific temperature sensors picked from a live list. If the reading stays over your threshold for a sustained time it escalates, first (optionally) boosting the fans to a chosen strength, never below what the system already chose, then pausing the session so the Mac can cool, with a notification saying why. Everything restores itself once temperatures recover. A built-in "Test Fans" check proves the fan path end to end in about 12 seconds ("All good. Fan 1: 0 → 4800 rpm"), so you can trust the boost before a heavy render needs it. Watching and pausing work everywhere. The fan boost runs through the administrator helper, so it's silent and never prompts.
- ⏱️ Menu-bar countdown. An optional live countdown next to the cup icon for timed sessions.
- ⌨️ Global hotkey. A system-wide keyboard shortcut to toggle keep-awake from any app, recorded in Preferences (Carbon-based, so no Input Monitoring or Accessibility permission).
- 🚀 Start on launch. Optionally begin a keep-awake session the moment Keepresso launches, for an always-on Mac that shouldn't need a rule.
- 💾 Export and import. Back up your settings, triggers, and presets to a JSON file, or move them to another Mac, from Preferences > General. The file is version-stamped and validated on import.
- 🔗 Shortcuts and URL scheme. Native Shortcuts actions (Start, Stop,
Toggle) for Shortcuts, Spotlight, and Siri, plus a URL scheme for Raycast,
Alfred, or a shell script:
keepresso://start?duration=60,keepresso://start?until=18:00,stop, ortoggle. - 💻 Closed-display mode. Keep running with the lid shut and no external display, on power or battery, for an always-on Mac or one you carry mid-task. The screen itself turns off when the lid closes, so it's not sitting lit inside a closed lid. An optional "Only while brewing" mode ties it to the session instead of leaving it on globally: on when a keep-awake session starts, off when it ends (or the app quits, even after a crash), with the password asked once per app run, or never with the administrator helper.
- 🔑 One password, ever. An optional administrator helper, a small
system service installed from Preferences > General (or the welcome screen),
handles the privileged switches for Keepresso: closed-display mode, the
thermal fan boost, and the AWDL pause become instant and silent, with no
password prompt on any launch. macOS asks for your password once, when you
approve the helper under Login Items, and the approval survives restarts
and updates, and app updates replace the service automatically, never a
reinstall. The helper can only flip those specific switches, restores
everything if the app quits or crashes, puts the
keepressoCLI on PATH for DMG installs, and can be removed at any time. Without it, everything still works the old way, with a once-per-run prompt (now always announced by a notification), except the fan boost, which stays off rather than ever prompting from a background safety action. - 🔔 Reminders, end actions, and event hooks. A "still brewing" notification (with an optional sound) after N minutes, one-time or recurring, so a forgotten session can't quietly drain the battery. When a session ends on its own (a timer expiring, triggers dropping), optionally notify, then sleep the display, lock the screen, start the screen saver, or sleep the Mac. And when something happens (session start/end, trigger fire/release, agent went idle, thermal stage, battery pause), run a Shortcut, POST a webhook, or a shell command, handy for a push to your phone when an overnight agent finishes. Schedule a system wake through the administrator helper and optionally start keep-awake when the Mac comes back (wake, work, sleep).
- 💽 Disk keep-alive. Periodic no-op disk I/O to stop an external drive or NAS from spinning down.
- 🖥️ Headless Setup checklist. Probes the system settings an always-on, headless Mac needs (sleep, auto-restart, auto-login, FileVault, remote access) and guides you to fix each one.
- 🖼️ Headless virtual display (experimental). On a Mac with no monitor, create a higher-resolution HiDPI virtual display so Screen Sharing and VNC look crisp instead of a fuzzy 1920×1080. Off by default; uses a private macOS API, so it's a no-dummy-plug software alternative you should treat as experimental.
- ✨ Native and quiet. A menu-bar agent with an animated cup while brewing, a live summary of what's holding the session on, a Liquid Glass app icon (Icon Composer, with light, dark, and tinted appearances), and Liquid Glass window styling on macOS 26+. The dropdown's glass is yours to tune, from frosty to fully clear (Preferences > General > Appearance).
- 🌍 Fifteen languages. English, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, across the menu, every window, notifications, VoiceOver labels, and the widgets. Pick one in Preferences or on the Welcome screen, or follow the system language (the default).
- ⬆️ Self-updating. Built-in auto-updates via Sparkle, with an EdDSA-signed appcast on GitHub Releases.
 General: keep-awake toggles, launch at login, a global shortcut, your language |
 Trigger engine: combine conditions with any or all, or apply a preset |
 Awake explainer: every app's live power assertions, plus why each session started or stopped |
 Headless virtual display: crisp Screen Sharing on a Mac with no monitor |
 Adding a condition: grouped menus for power and display, network and devices, apps and activity, with Claude Code connected |
|
The only app you'll ever need for a headless Mac setup, whether it's running AI agents, a server, a render farm, or anything reachable over HTTP or SSH. Keepresso fits the way Macs are used now, and where they're headed:
- 🤖 AI agents. Keep a Mac awake and reachable so agents can operate it around the clock without it dozing off mid-task.
- 💻 MacBooks on the go. Closed-display mode keeps work running on power or battery while you pack up and move.
- 🧑💻 Builders and vibe coders. Long builds, training runs, and overnight jobs finish instead of getting cut short by sleep.
- 🏢 Business and enterprise, no charge. Headless Mac minis and Mac Studios powering local LLMs, agent fleets, CI, or a render farm stay up without a license fee.
- 🎬 Studios. Long renders and exports run to completion, untended.
- 🎮 Gamers and streamers. Sessions stay awake while you play (native, Steam, or cloud), and the AWDL pause smooths out the once-a-second ping spikes that stutter cloud gaming and live streams.
The use cases are effectively limitless. Modern UI, a solid and well-tested foundation, and a quiet must-have for the next decade of computing.
Any tool can hold the Mac awake for exactly the lifetime of a task through a bounded lease: acquire with a TTL, heartbeat while working, release when done. Leases union, a crashed tool's lease simply expires, and after the last one ends the Mac can sleep again (running your configured end-of-session action). Works for AI agents, render scripts, backup jobs, anything that can run a command:
ID=$(uuidgen)
keepresso lease acquire --id "$ID" --tool render --task "overnight export" --ttl 600
# ... long work with periodic: keepresso lease heartbeat --id "$ID"
keepresso lease release --id "$ID"MCP-capable agents get the same operations from the bundled server; point your MCP configuration at:
/Applications/Keepresso.app/Contents/Helpers/keepresso-mcp
A ready-to-copy agent skill ships in the app at
Contents/Resources/AgentSkill/keep-awake. Agents can also read the system
wake schedule with keepresso wake status, and, if you flip the default-off
switch in Preferences ▸ Automation, schedule wake-ups with
keepresso wake set.
Homebrew:
brew install --cask gyorgysh/keepresso/keepressoManual: download the latest signed, notarized DMG from keepresso.com or Releases, drag Keepresso to Applications, and launch it.
Either way, Keepresso keeps itself up to date from there.
Click the cup in the menu bar to open Keepresso. Right-click (or control-click) it for a compact context menu with the app entries: Preferences, Headless Setup, Gaming & Streaming, About, Check for Updates, and Quit.
- Quick toggle. Flip Keep awake on or off and pick a duration: indefinitely, a preset (15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours), any custom duration, or until a time of day. The cup fills and animates while brewing.
- Show less. The disclosure row at the bottom of the panel folds the option toggles and app entries away, leaving just the status and the keep-awake controls. Keepresso remembers the choice, and everything hidden stays reachable from the right-click menu.
- Keep awake with lid closed. Toggle it right from the menu before you shut
the lid or unplug. It flips a system setting (
pmset disablesleep), so it needs administrator rights: silent with the helper installed, one password ask without it. Works on power or battery; turn it off when you're done, on battery in a bag it can drain and heat up. Or set it to "Only while brewing" in Preferences > General and it follows the session on its own: on at session start, off at session end or app quit. - Preferences (⌘,) holds the set-and-forget configuration, in tabs:
- General: what to keep awake, the administrator helper, menu-bar countdown, battery auto-pause, closed-display mode, launch at login, settings backup (export/import), and the welcome screen.
- Triggers: turn on rule-based activation, apply a preset, and build your rule set.
- Reminder: a one-time or recurring "still brewing" alert, with a sound, plus end notifications and the ending-soon warning.
- Automation: end-of-session actions, outbound event hooks, and scheduled wake (with optional wake-and-brew).
- Disk: choose a volume to keep spun up and how often to touch it.
- Display: create an experimental high-resolution headless virtual display.
- Activity: what's keeping the Mac awake right now, a weekly held-awake summary, and why each session started or stopped (persisted across relaunch).
- Headless Setup checks that an always-on Mac (say a Mac mini with no display) is configured to stay reachable, and links you straight to the right settings.
- Gaming & Streaming diagnoses the once-a-second Wi-Fi lag spikes AWDL causes (jitter test), pauses AWDL for the session with one toggle, and checks the radio hygiene around it: wired network, Wi-Fi channel, Bluetooth, Game Mode.
Keepresso has no Dock icon by design. Everything lives in the menu bar.
Keepresso ships native Shortcuts actions: Start Keeping Awake (optionally for N minutes), Stop Keeping Awake, and Toggle Keep Awake, usable from the Shortcuts app, Spotlight, and Siri.
It also registers a keepresso:// URL scheme so Raycast, Alfred, or a shell
script can start or stop a session without opening the menu:
open "keepresso://start" # indefinite session
open "keepresso://start?duration=60" # timed session, in minutes
open "keepresso://start?until=18:00" # until a wall-clock time (24h HH:MM)
open "keepresso://stop"
open "keepresso://toggle"
Either way, if triggers are on they pause first (same as the menu's Pause Triggers), so the command actually takes effect.
The app bundle ships a caffeinate-style CLI. The Homebrew cask links it onto
your PATH; on a DMG install, the administrator helper creates the
/usr/local/bin/keepresso link for you. It drives the app for session
commands and can also hold its own assertion when you need to block in a
pipeline:
keepresso start --for 90 # tell the app to brew for 90 minutes
keepresso stop # end the session
keepresso status # exit 0 awake, 1 not, 2 app not running
keepresso status --json # machine-readable, jq-friendly
keepresso -t 3600 # hold an assertion itself for an hour
keepresso -w $! # stay awake until a process exits
keepresso -d -i # also keep the display awake, until Ctrl-C
keepresso -u # wake the display nowThe standalone holds work even when the app is not running; keepresso help
lists everything. Installed from a DMG instead of Homebrew? Symlink it
yourself: ln -s /Applications/Keepresso.app/Contents/Helpers/keepresso /usr/local/bin/.
The App Sandbox blocks the IOPMAssertion power APIs Keepresso depends on, so
it's distributed outside the store, as a direct, notarized DMG download.
Keepresso uses XcodeGen to generate
the Xcode project from project.yml (the .xcodeproj is not
checked in), and Swift Package Manager for the testable core
(KeepressoCore).
Requirements: macOS 14+, Xcode 16+, xcodegen (brew install xcodegen).
git clone https://github.com/gyorgysh/keepresso.git
cd keepresso
./scripts/run.sh # generate the project and open it in Xcode (⌘R to run)The sleep-control state machine lives in KeepressoCore and is fully unit
tested, independent of any UI:
swift build # build the core library
swift test # run the test suite (requires the full Xcode toolchain)Two layers, by design:
KeepressoCoreis a SwiftUI-free SwiftPM library: theSessionControllerstate machine plus protocol seams over every system touchpoint (power assertions, power source, displays, network, workspace, disk, notifications). This is where behavior lives and where the tests are.Keepressois the thin SwiftUIMenuBarExtraapp: views and lifecycle glue wired to the real system backends.
The controller doesn't run its own timer; the app ticks it once a second. Tests advance a fake clock and inject fakes for the system seams, so the logic is verified without touching real hardware.
scripts/run.sh: generate the project and open it in Xcode.scripts/make-icon.swift: regenerate the app icon asset catalog.
See docs/BUILDING.md for a full build walkthrough and CLAUDE.md for the architecture and contributor workflow.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. New behavior goes in KeepressoCore behind
a protocol seam with tests, then a thin SwiftUI layer in the app.
GNU GPL v3.0 © 2026 Keepresso contributors.
Keepresso is free software: use it, study it, fork it, and contribute back. The copyleft terms mean any distributed version (including forks and modifications) must stay open-source under the same license, so nobody can take it closed and ship a proprietary product from it.
If Keepresso is useful to you, you can support its development.