Keep Your Mac Awake with Caffeine
Have you ever worked on your Mac and the damn thing kept going to sleep on you when you least wanted it to? Then you have wake it up and enter your password….
I feel like this is more of a problem for Macbook users than iMac. Since power management is usually more important for laptops. The system settings are usually set to put the computer to sleep pretty fast so that the battery doesn’t get drained. Desktop users can usually afford longer wait times before the computer goes to sleep. But there are times when you actually need for your computer to stay awake. Either temporarily or for an entire session.
My Mac Uses Caffeine?
Normally you would have to go into your system preferences and manually turn sleep mode on and off. That’s okay for an occasional instance, but it’s still a pain in the butt. So why not just give your Mac a shot of caffeine and keep it awake for a specified time or indefinitely? It’s very simple to do. Simply install the app Caffeine. It can be downloaded from several places, but the easiest place would be from the Mac App Store. Or you can download it directly from the publishers website.
Getting Started
Once installed, go to your Applications folder and start Caffeine by double clicking on it.
You should see a coffee cup icon appear in your menu bar and you should see this screen.
The app is pretty straight forward. If you right click on the icon in your menu bar you’ll see a small menu. The preferences menu will let you set how the app starts up. Since Caffeine uses almost zero resources, I usually set it to start at login. That way it’s in the menu bar and ready to use.
Caffeine Preferences
One of the other great features of Caffeine is that you can set it to run for a specified amount of time.
Caffeine menu bar
That’s all it takes to get it setup. Simply click on the coffee cup in your menu bar to turn Caffeine on, and click again to turn it off. When the app is off, your normal power settings will run just like they always have.
Why Do I Want To Prevent My Mac From Sleeping?
- One of the best uses for preventing your Mac from sleeping is when you are downloading files. Have you ever started a download and the estimated time was going to be about 30 minutes? But it gets interrupted because your Mac went to sleep? Give your Mac a shot of caffeine and then turn it off when the download is finished. The timed featured works well with this as well. If the estimated time is, let’s say an hour, you can set Caffeine to stay on for 1 hour. Then your download should have time to finish, caffeine will turn off and then your normal sleep settings will take over.
- Another great use for this app is when you’re watching movies or long YouTube videos. It’s so annoying to be immersed in the video or movie and all of sudden your screen turns black and then you have to wiggle the mouse and enter your password and then start the video again. Whew! Just turn on Caffeine and you’re good to go.
- It could also be of benefit if you do live video streaming, long study sessions, etc. I hate when I’m researching or reading, and everytime I turn back to my Mac I have to wake it up.
Give It a Try!
So, lets do a quick recap. It’s a free app, it prevents your Mac from sleeping, it has a timer and it’s easy to turn on and off. I think if you try it out you will quickly fall in love with it!
Now, if you’d like to prevent your Mac from sleeping when you have the lid closed, take a look at this tutorial.
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