I’ll show you how to use macOS’s built-in No additional apps that you need to install, no menu bar junk, no "why is my Mac sleeping again?!" drama.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever kicked off a long download, macOS has an official tool for this, and it’s been sitting right under your nose:<\/p>\n It’s basically the Terminal equivalent of "No, macOS, we are not<\/em> done here."<\/p>\n Open Terminal and run:<\/p>\n That’s it. Your Mac won’t go idle-sleep as long as this process is running.<\/p>\n To stop it press Ctrl + C<\/strong><\/p>\n Sometimes you just want to keep your Mac awake for 2 hours (and keep that Slack icon \ud83d\udfe2 hey, I don’t judge<\/em>), and then you’d pass in the That’s 2 hours (60 60 <\/em> 2 = 7200). Yes, we still count seconds like it’s 1999.<\/em><\/p>\n A few common ones:<\/p>\n If for some reason you want to prevent your display from dimming, use the This is the chef’s kiss<\/em> use case; instead of running Example: big rsync backup:<\/p>\n Example: long npm build:<\/p>\n Example: running tests that take forever because you’re "testing thoroughly" (and definitely not because of that one integration suite<\/em>):<\/p>\n When your command finishes, If you want to keep your Terminal usable:<\/p>\n That Want to see it?<\/p>\n Want to stop it?<\/p>\n Option A: bring it back to foreground and stop:<\/p>\n then hit Ctrl + C<\/strong><\/p>\n Option B: kill it by PID (you’ll see PID in the Here’s the "print this on a sticky note" version:<\/p>\n Keep system awake until stopped:<\/p>\n Keep awake for 1 hour:<\/p>\n Keep display awake:<\/p>\n Keep awake while a command runs:<\/p>\n Display + system, background:<\/p>\n If you find yourself using it often, add this to your Reload:<\/p>\n Now you can do:<\/p>\n And voil\u00e0 \u2014 your Mac stays awake, your command runs, and you look like you totally planned it this way.<\/p>\n Hope this was useful, and see you next time \ud83d\udcaa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TL;DR I’ll show you how to use macOS’s built-in caffeinate command to keep your Mac awake: until you stop it for a set amount of time, or only…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-quick-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}caffeinate<\/code> command to keep your Mac awake:<\/p>\n\n
Why you’d care about
caffeinate<\/code><\/h2>\nrsync<\/code> backup, Docker build, video export, or "I’ll just run this migration quickly" job\u2026 and then came back to find your Mac politely sleeping like an innocent kitten \u2014 you already know why this matters.<\/p>\ncaffeinate<\/code><\/pre>\nOption #0: The simplest possible usage<\/h2>\n
caffeinate<\/code><\/pre>\nOption #1: Keep the Mac awake for a fixed amount of time<\/h2>\n
-t<\/code> parameter (which indicates seconds):<\/p>\ncaffeinate -t 7200<\/code><\/pre>\n\n
1800<\/code><\/li>\n3600<\/code><\/li>\n7200<\/code><\/li>\n14400<\/code><\/li>\n<\/ul>\nOption #2: Keep the display awake as well<\/h2>\n
-d<\/code> switch:<\/p>\ncaffeinate -d<\/code><\/pre>\nOption #3: The best trick \u2014 keep Mac awake only while a command runs<\/strong><\/h2>\n
caffeinate<\/code> separately, wrap your long-running command with it:<\/p>\ncaffeinate -i your_command_here<\/code><\/pre>\ncaffeinate -i rsync -av ~\/Pictures\/ \/Volumes\/Backup\/Pictures\/<\/code><\/pre>\ncaffeinate -i npm run build<\/code><\/pre>\ncaffeinate -i .\/run-tests.sh<\/code><\/pre>\ncaffeinate<\/code> stops automatically. No cleanup required. No "wait, did I leave it running overnight?" paranoia.<\/p>\nOption #4: Run
caffeinate<\/code> in the background<\/h2>\ncaffeinate -d -i &<\/code><\/pre>\n&<\/code> sends it to the background.<\/p>\nps aux | grep caffeinate<\/code><\/pre>\nfg<\/code><\/pre>\nps<\/code> output):<\/p>\nkill <PID><\/code><\/pre>\nHandy flag cheat sheet<\/h2>\n
\n
caffeinate<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/li>\ncaffeinate -t 3600<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/li>\ncaffeinate -d<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/li>\ncaffeinate -i caffeinate -d -i &<\/code><\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nBonus: a tiny alias (because typing is hard)<\/h2>\n
~\/.zshrc<\/code> (or ~\/.bashrc<\/code>):<\/p>\nalias awake='caffeinate -d -i'<\/code><\/pre>\nsource ~\/.zshrc<\/code><\/pre>\nawake rsync -av ~\/Stuff\/ \/Volumes\/Backup\/Stuff\/<\/code><\/pre>\n