macOS puts your Mac to sleep when you close the lid. Awayke flips pmset disablesleep that stops it, and puts it behind a single menubar icon.
What it does
Left-click the laptop icon to toggle on/off.
Right-click for a bounded session:
- Stay active for 15min - 2h, or until you close and reopen the lid
- Optional low-battery cutoff at 10%, 20%, or 30%
Quitting Awayke always re-enables sleep.
Install
Download (recommended)
- Grab
Awayke.app.zip from the latest release.
- Unzip and drag
Awayke.app into /Applications.
- Open it.
- macOS asks you to allow Awayke background helper. Approve it once to get rid of sudo password permission asks.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/daemonphantom/Awayke.git
cd Awayke
open Awayke.xcodeproj
Requires Xcode 16+ and macOS 13 Ventura or later.
Why isn't this on the App Store?
App Store sandboxing blocks the system call Awayke depends on. Lunar, TextExpander, and BetterTouchTool ship outside the App Store for the same reason.
Who it's for
- Long builds, downloads, or a server process you don't want to babysit
- Agentic coding sessions with Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex that run for a while
- Walking to the next room mid-task without losing state
- Using an old MacBook as a home server
No more wedging an HDMI cable into the hinge.
How it works
Most keep-awake tools use caffeinate or IOKit power assertions. Those stop the display and idle sleep, but macOS handles lid-close sleep on a separate path that ignores them. The only reliable override is Apple's own pmset disablesleep.
pmset needs root, so Awayke installs a small privileged helper daemon via SMAppService on first run. The menubar app talks to the helper over XPC; the helper runs pmset -a disablesleep 1 or 0. You approve the helper once. After that, toggling is silent and survives reboots.
Is this safe?
The command Awayke runs is Apple's own tooling, and short sessions carry little thermal risk. Two rules:
- Don't put a lid-closed, awake MacBook in a bag. It will get hot.
- Keep it on AC power for anything long.
Use at your own risk.
Caveats
pmset -a disablesleep is system-wide. While Awayke is active, nothing sleeps from a closed lid.- macOS still forces sleep on critical battery, regardless of
disablesleep.
- If Awayke crashes or the Mac loses power while active, the setting may persist. Toggle it off and on again, or run
sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0 in Terminal.
Why not Amphetamine?
Amphetamine is excellent and can do this too, three menus deep. Awayke exists for people who want exactly the one thing.
| Awayke | Amphetamine | caffeinate |
|---|
| Prevents lid-close sleep | ✅ | ✅ (buried in menus) | ❌ |
| One-click toggle | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| No sudo prompt | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Timed sessions | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Low-battery cutoff | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Does nothing else | ✅ | ❌ | – |
Closing the lid to sleep your Mac is one of the best things about macOS. Awayke doesn't change that. It's an occasional override.
Privacy
Awayke collects nothing. No analytics, no crash reports, no network calls.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. Open an issue if something misbehaves on your machine, and include your macOS version.
License
MIT
