So, say you just logged on to Hulu to watch the latest episode of “The Office” and you get all settled in, and low and behold, your Mac keeps going to sleep on you. Meaning, either the screen goes dim, or the screensaver turns on, or it just plain shuts off. Well, it’s supposed to do that because at one point or another, that’s how you set it up in the System Preferences. (More on that later)
Here’s a quick, easy and free application to keep your Mac awake. It’s called (appropriately)…Caffeine.
Caffeine is a free app that sits up in your menu bar. The implementation is brainless.
If the cup is empty, you’re out of caffeine = your Mac will fall asleep.
If the cup is full = you have caffeine = your Mac will stay awake.
Just click it on or off depending on what you are doing at the time. It’s brilliant! You can download Caffeine for free, here.
April 4th, 2009 at 3:57 am
this is one of my favorites. thanks for showing it to me when I got my macBook…
April 10th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I so need to look into this app! Thanks Josh.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
you make my day, I was running crazy with the screensaver. thanks a lot
April 14th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Umm….couldn’t you like, just turn off the screensaver/power saver options instead of adding another program to run and use up more battery life?
April 14th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
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April 15th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Great comment JadedTech. Well, you could. But say you just wanted to keep your mac awake for a couple of minutes while you showed a friend a funny YouTube video. Instead of having to go into the system preferences, and disable all the screen saver stuff, you can just click on “Caffeine” to keep your computer from going to sleep, show them the video, then click it off. It’s that simple.