Lidless
Keep the system awake. Let the display sleep.
Your Mac looks asleep — but downloads, builds and remote sessions keep running behind a locked, dark screen. The display sleeps to save power; the system stays awake. One switch, that's it.
Free · macOS 12.0+ / Windows 10+ · v0.1.0 · No account. No daemon. No dock icon.
Flip it once. The Mac won't sleep.
Lidless holds the same kind of power assertion the OS itself uses. Idle system sleep is blocked — everything else behaves exactly like normal.
- Screen still dims, locks and turns off
- Downloads, builds and agents keep running
- Off means off — nothing left behind
A dark screen that never goes offline
Because the system never sleeps, the network never drops. Lock the screen, walk away, and every session you left running stays alive.
- Wi-Fi stays up while locked
- SSH, RustDesk & Screen Sharing stay reachable
- Claude Code keeps coding while you're out
Battery-aware, automatically
One optional checkbox: pause on battery, resume the instant you plug back in. Your laptop never drains on the couch by accident.
- Pauses cleanly on battery
- Resumes on AC — no re-flipping
- Off by default; your call
No dock icon. No window to babysit.
Lidless lives in the menu bar. Click the icon for a little panel; click anywhere else and it tucks itself away — while keep-awake holds in the background.
- Click to pop, click away to hide
- No taskbar or dock clutter
- Keeps holding after it disappears
The same switch, on Windows
One tool, two platforms, identical behavior. On Modern Standby PCs, Lidless detects S0 sleep and tells you how to stop the Wi-Fi adapter from napping.
- macOS & Windows builds
- Detects Modern Standby (S0)
- Wireless power-saving hint, built in
Real system calls. No tricks.
No fake mouse jigglers, no keypress simulators. Lidless asks the OS — the supported way — to hold off on sleep, with hand-written FFI and zero third-party power crates.
- IOKit power assertion on macOS
- SetThreadExecutionState on Windows
- Open source — read every line on GitHub
…and the little things are right, too
No bloat, no background services you can't see. Just the details that matter.
One-tap keep awake
Flip one switch and your Mac won't fall asleep. The screen still dims and locks normally — only idle system sleep is blocked.
Only when plugged in
Optionally pause on battery and resume the moment you plug back in. Great for laptops you don't want draining on the couch.
Lives in the menu bar
No dock icon, no always-on window. Click the tray icon for a little panel; click away and it tucks itself back while staying active.
Cross-platform
The same one-switch tool runs on Windows too, with a Modern Standby hint when your wireless adapter would otherwise nap.
Featherweight & native
Built on Tauri with hand-written system calls — no Electron, no heavyweight runtime. It just sits there sipping nothing.
Nothing leaves your Mac
No account, no telemetry, no network calls of its own. Lidless only talks to the OS power APIs — and nothing else.
Built for the moments you step away
Lock the screen, walk off, and let the machine keep working. A few of the things people leave running:
Kick off a long agentic run, then lock your Mac and step out. Lidless keeps the system awake so the task finishes — instead of stalling the moment the lid closes.
Walk away while Claude Code keeps codingClaude CodeSSH, RustDesk, VNC or Screen Sharing back to your machine. The Mac stays online and reachable while locked, so your tunnel doesn't drop.
Reconnect from anywhereRemote accessCompiles, Docker images, local CI and test suites that take an hour keep running. Lock the screen, save power on the display, finish the job.
Don't babysit the buildLong builds & CIModel weights, datasets, container layers, OS images — multi-gigabyte transfers complete overnight without the system dozing off mid-download.
Let large downloads finishBig transfersVideo encodes, audio batches and 3D renders run to completion while you sleep. Wake up to finished files, not a paused job.
Overnight renders and exportsRender & encodeKeep chat, collaboration and self-hosted services responsive on a locked Mac — no "away" status the moment you step out for coffee.
Stay present for your teamAlways reachable
Frequently asked questions
The things people ask before downloading.
Does the screen stay on the whole time?
No — and that's the point. Your display sleeps and locks normally to save power and stay private. Only the system's idle sleep is blocked, so background work keeps running behind a locked, dark screen.
How is this different from Amphetamine or Caffeine?
Same core idea — keep the Mac awake — but Lidless is deliberately minimal: one switch, a plugged-in-only option, and a tray panel that disappears when you don't need it. It's also cross-platform and fully open source.
How is it different from the caffeinate command?
caffeinate -i is the built-in macOS terminal command that holds the same kind of power assertion — but it stops the moment you close the terminal window, and there's no UI or plugged-in-only option. Lidless is a persistent menu bar GUI for that exact mechanism: flip it once and it keeps holding in the background. You can confirm it's working any time with pmset -g assertions.
Will it keep my Mac online for remote access?
Yes. Because the system never goes to sleep, network stays up, so SSH, RustDesk, VNC and Screen Sharing remain reachable while the Mac is locked.
Does it drain my battery?
Keeping the system awake uses more power than sleeping, so on a laptop we recommend the "only when plugged in" option — Lidless then pauses on battery and resumes when you plug in.
Is it safe? What does it access?
Lidless only calls the operating system's power-management APIs. No account, no telemetry, no network traffic of its own. The full source is on GitHub if you'd like to verify.
Is there a Windows version?
Yes — use the Download for Windows button above (or grab the .msi from the GitHub releases page). The same one-switch app runs on Windows, with an extra hint for Modern Standby machines whose Wi-Fi adapter would otherwise sleep.
Keep the work awake. Walk away.
Free, open source, and out of your way.
Free under the MIT license. No account, no subscription, no catch.
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