Optional keep awake while lid closed option

[nulldoubt]

It would be really great to have a built-in option to enable the device to stay awake even when the lid is shut.

Just a proxy to this command and the device won't sleep even when the lid is shut.

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1

Turning it off is as easy as passing a 0 instead of a 1 to the command:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0

---

Enabling this feature would help many users who run autonomous agents or even just long build tasks on their MacBooks.

[teddychan]

+1 I also want this feature

[nulldoubt]

@teddychan If you prefer not to wait for KeepingYouAwake to implement this functionality, please consider my application, HoldAwake Direct (not HoldAwake App Store). It supports sleep prevention, enabling you to reduce display and keyboard brightness to zero, close your MacBook, and travel while updates or agents execute.

[dawoodabdullah010]

The reason this hasn't worked is likely because pmset disablesleep requires root access. This means the app would need to include a privileged helper and ask for your password. Most keep-awake apps stop at lid-open for this reason.

I faced the same issue with Claude Code running out overnight, so I created a solution. Lid-closed works whether plugged in or on battery, with no need for an external monitor. It manages itself while you're away; it automatically stops at 20% battery and reduces activity if the Mac gets warm. You can leave it running and forget about it.

https://www.useawake.xyz offers a free 3-day trial. It's notarized and costs a one-time fee of $14.99.

If you're only interested in the lid-open feature, you can find it here: https://github.com/dawoodabdullah010/awake

(I'm the developer.)

[peter46jan]

Disclosure up front: I built a third option, it's free and MIT-licensed, but weigh this accordingly.

@dawoodabdullah010 is right that pmset -a disablesleep needs root, but a privileged helper isn't the only way to get there. A sudoers drop-in scoped to two literal commands is enough, and it's a much smaller thing to hand out:

<user> ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/pmset -a disablesleep 1, /usr/bin/pmset -a disablesleep 0

Spelling out the arguments is the whole point. man sudoers grants any arguments when you omit them, so the same rule written as NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/pmset would passwordlessly allow pmset restoredefaults, pmset schedule wake and the rest, effectively all of power management as root. With the arguments pinned, root can flip exactly one flag and nothing else.

The harder problem is the one the README here already names: SleepDisabled doesn't only stop clamshell sleep, it also disables the kernel's low-battery and thermal emergency sleeps. It goes through userDisabledAllSleep into checkSystemSleepAllowed(), which is the same gate those two pass through. So anything that sets this flag has to put something back in their place, and has to clean the flag up if it dies. A SIGKILL leaves your Mac unable to sleep until someone clears it by hand.

Mine handles that with a time limit, a battery floor and a thermal watch that can't be switched off, plus a watchdog that clears the flag if the app is killed. There's a privilege-escalation audit of the sudoers path in the repo, including two findings it turned up and how they were fixed.

https://github.com/peter46jan/dopamine-code. Free, MIT, no paid tier and no hosted version. No binaries either, you build it yourself (brew tap peter46jan/dopamine && brew install dopamine-code).

Fair warning: it's been tested on exactly one Mac. That's stated in the README and the licence for a reason. I'd rather you knew that before trusting it with a laptop in a bag.

[teddychan]

there is command line you can run it easily.

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1
pmset -g | grep -i SleepDisabled   # expect: SleepDisabled  1

to disable:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0

it just sometime I forgot to disable it.
there is another opensource one can do most of the work.
https://github.com/Aboudjem/Sleepless