Keep your Mac awake.
One click and your Mac won’t sleep, dim or lock. Pick 1, 2 or 4 hours — or stay awake until you turn it off. A free, native alternative to Caffeine and Amphetamine, on macOS and Windows.
One click. Stays awake. Done.
Open Toolbox from your menu bar, hit Keep Awake and choose how long. Your Mac won’t sleep, the screen won’t dim, and it won’t lock — until the time’s up or you switch it off. Under the hood it holds the system awake with the OS’s own power API, so it’s clean and reliable.
- Presets for 1, 2 and 4 hours
- “Until I turn it off” for no time limit
- A live countdown of the time remaining
- Releases automatically when it ends — or when you quit Toolbox
How to keep your Mac awake without Terminal.
macOS already ships a command for this: caffeinate. Open Terminal, type
it, and your Mac stays awake for as long as that window keeps it running. Its flags
choose what it holds off: -d keeps the display on, -i stops
idle sleep, and -t sets a limit in seconds. Press Control‑C, or close the
window, and it lets go.
It works, and it is the same power assertion Keep Awake uses. The catch is everything
around it: a Terminal window you cannot close, a number of seconds to work out, and no
way to see at a glance whether it is still on. Keep Awake gives you the same result
from the menu bar, with presets, a visible countdown and an off switch. And on Windows,
where there is no caffeinate at all, it does the same job.
- No command to remember, no window to keep open
- Time left always visible in the menu bar
- Releases on its own when the timer ends
Same job. One less single-purpose icon.
If you’ve used Caffeine or Amphetamine, this will feel instantly familiar — it stops your machine from sleeping, on your terms. The difference: Keep Awake works on both macOS and Windows, and it lives inside Toolbox, so instead of one more standalone app you also get a clipboard manager, timers, notes and dev tools in the same menu-bar icon.
Looking for more menu bar apps that already work on macOS 27? Here is our list of free ones, all verified on 27.
- Works on macOS and Windows (Amphetamine is Mac-only)
- Free, native and lightweight
- Part of a whole toolbox, not a lone icon
It’s one widget of many.
Keep Awake is a single tab inside Webstarted Toolbox — a lightweight hub that lives in your menu bar (macOS) or system tray (Windows). One icon, a click, and a popover full of small tools organized in tabs.
Questions, answered.
Does Keep Awake work on Windows too?
Yes. Webstarted Toolbox is a native app for both macOS and Windows, and Keep Awake works on both — it holds the system awake using the OS’s own power API and releases it automatically when the timer ends or you quit the app.
Is it really free?
Yes. Keep Awake is one of the widgets built into Webstarted Toolbox, which is free to download and use — no account required.
How is it different from Caffeine or Amphetamine?
Same idea — stop your machine from sleeping — but Keep Awake runs on both macOS and Windows, and it comes inside Toolbox alongside a clipboard manager, timers, notes, dev tools and more, so it’s not one more single-purpose icon in your menu bar.
Will it drain my battery or stop my screen from locking?
It only prevents the system from going to sleep for as long as you choose. When the preset time is up — or when you turn it off, or quit Toolbox — everything goes back to your normal power settings.
Can I keep my Mac awake indefinitely?
Yes. Pick one of the timed presets (1, 2 or 4 hours) or choose “Until I turn it off” to stay awake with no time limit.
Will it keep my Mac awake with the lid closed?
Not on battery. Closing the lid triggers your Mac’s built-in clamshell sleep — a hardware behavior that no app (Keep Awake, Caffeine or Amphetamine included) can override. It keeps your Mac awake while the lid is open, and in clamshell mode when you’re on power with an external display connected, which macOS allows on its own.
Do I need Terminal, the caffeinate command or pmset?
No. Keep Awake drives your Mac’s own power API (the same one behind the caffeinate command) from a single click, so you never have to type “caffeinate -d” or change pmset settings in Terminal. On Windows it uses the equivalent system call.
Get Webstarted Toolbox
Free to use. Keep Awake and every other widget included. macOS 12+ and Windows 10+.
One icon, many small tools
This is just one of the widgets in Webstarted Toolbox. Here are the rest: