Caffeine-like utility to keep you MacBook awake with its lid closed

Re:Caffeine-like utility to keep you MacBook awake with its ... by clash on Friday October 23, 2026 @09:08PM (#50217459)

1) Because you will eventually forget to reactivate it, which then leads to obvious problems.

2) Because you can for example be connected via ssh: You run the script and if your connection is disconnected, caffeinate+ shuts down the MacBook.

Edit: The API call that 'sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1' does is literally the first thing caffeine+ does. As soon as the lid closes the command is automatically reverted so you can't forget to do it yourself.

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Re:Caffeine-like utility to keep you MacBook awake with its ... by tristanj on Saturday October 24, 2026 @12:07AM (#50218293)

Both of those are trivial to do in a few lines of shell. There's no need to write or download a custom tool for this. I asked Opus to draft one up and it's just five lines long.

    #!/bin/bash
    [ "$EUID" = 0 ] || exec sudo "$0" "$@"
    pmset -a disablesleep 1
    trap exit HUP INT TERM
    trap 'pmset -a disablesleep 0; ioreg -r -k AppleClamshellState | grep -q "State\" = Yes" && pmset sleepnow' EXIT
    "${@:-read}"

How to use it:

    ./caf.sh              # stay awake until you press Enter
    ./caf.sh make build   # stay awake only while the command runs

Sleep is re-enabled when: the command finishes, the user presses Enter, on Ctrl-C, on SSH disconnect, or on kill (excluding SIGKILL). If the lid is closed when the command finishes, sleep is re-enabled and the Mac goes to sleep.

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Re:Caffeine-like utility to keep you MacBook awake with its ... by clash on Saturday October 24, 2026 @07:40AM (#50220324)

You say "No need to write a tool", then immediately write a tool. Brilliant :)

My first attempt was a shell script almost exactly like yours. Then I thought I want to be able to set SUID so I don't have to use sudo. This ruled out the shell script. I could have just done a bunch of 'system("pmset ...")' calls but thought I might as well use the native commands.

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