Keep Mac Awake 1.2.2

Refinements to what 1.2.1 added, all of them found by looking at the app rather than at a test.

• What is keeping your Mac awake is now named by the app you recognise. Some processes hold assertions on behalf of others, so the list used to name the middleman while the app you know sat buried in a line of internal bookkeeping. That bookkeeping is no longer shown at all — none of it means anything, and some of it identifies your machine.
• An app holding both your display and your system awake is one entry, saying both, instead of appearing twice under the same name.
• Settings shows the state now, not the state when you first opened it. Reopening the window used to show whatever was true the first time — an app quit minutes ago could still be listed.

Requires macOS 14 or later. Universal, signed and notarized. Drag it to Applications in Finder — a terminal copy triggers App Translocation, which breaks the helper.

Keep Mac Awake 1.2.1

Your settings are now held, not just written. While a switch is on, that setting stays in effect — if another app or a script changes it, it is put back. What is not touched is anything you did not switch on.

The app also tells you when something outside the settings is keeping your Mac awake, and gives you a way out if it ever leaves you stuck.

Fixed

• The app could hang silently on launch. If macOS could not start the helper, the app sat in the menu bar doing nothing and logging nothing.
• Updating could break the helper. Replacing the app invalidated the registration's bookmark, and it stayed broken until repaired by hand. It now repairs itself in one launch.
• Settings could report the helper as not installed while it was working. State is now read from the helper itself, not only from macOS's record of it.
• The menu showed everything as off when it could not reach the helper, while the settings were still in effect. It now says the state is unknown.

New

• Restore Defaults — hands every power setting back to macOS and releases the app's records. You need this if your Mac already had "never sleep the display" set before you first used this app: that gets remembered as your machine's normal, and switching everything off restores it faithfully.
• Keeping this Mac awake — Settings names whatever is holding an assertion. Those override the power settings for as long as they last, which is why a Mac can stay awake with every switch off.

Requires macOS 14 or later. Universal, signed and notarized. Drag it to Applications in Finder — a terminal copy triggers App Translocation, which breaks the helper.

Keep Mac Awake 1.1.2

First public release.

Install

Download KeepMacAwake-1.1.2.dmg, open it, and drag the app to Applications
in Finder. Signed and notarized, so there is no "unidentified developer"
warning.

Copying it from a terminal instead of dragging it triggers App Translocation,
which runs the app from a temporary path where the helper cannot register.

Requires macOS 14 or later. Universal (Apple Silicon and Intel).

What it does

Switch	Effect
Keep Awake	The Mac never sleeps on its own. The screen may still turn off.
Keep display on	The screen stays on too.
Stay awake with lid closed	Closing the lid does not put it to sleep.

For "close the lid and keep working", turn on the first and the third.

Settings stay after you quit

The switches write real system settings, so they survive quitting the app,
crashing, and rebooting. The app does not need to keep running. Switching them
off restores the values your machine had before.

Changing these settings needs administrator rights, so a small helper is
installed once — macOS asks you to approve it in System Settings › General ›
Login Items the first time, and never again.

Verified on macOS 26.5.2

• All three switches written to the system
• Settings survive kill -9
• Settings survive a reboot
• Lid closed for 166 seconds with neither the app nor the helper running
• Original values captured correctly and restored on switch-off