Valpas
Keep your Mac awake for exactly as long as you say — one switch in the menu bar, and a countdown that says when it ends.
Version 1.0 · 1.8 MB · macOS 13 (Ventura) or later · Apple Silicon & Intel · Sandboxed
Keep your Mac awake, for exactly as long as you meant to
A Mac that falls asleep in the middle of a render, a long upload, a download, a build, a backup or a presentation is a small disaster you have to notice, undo and start again. Valpas is the switch that prevents it: click the icon in the menu bar, pick 15 minutes, an hour, four hours or forever, and your Mac stays awake — with the time remaining right there, so you never have to wonder whether it's still on. When the countdown ends, nothing is taken away and nothing snaps off: Valpas simply hands your Mac back to its own sleep settings. That is the whole idea — it doesn't override your Mac, it postpones it.
Features
- One switch, one glance — the panel says what is happening in plain words: Awake 13:59 while a session runs, Standing by when it doesn't, and what your Mac will do either way
- Choose how long — 15 minutes, 30, one hour, two, four, or forever, and + 15 minutes whenever the job runs longer than you thought
- Two modes — keep the display lit and the screen saver away, or let the screen sleep while the Mac itself keeps working
- It starts by itself — while the Mac is on the power adapter, while an external display is attached, or while an app you choose is running: the render, the call, the upload
- It stops by itself — a battery guard ends the session when the charge runs low, so an app meant to keep your Mac awake never empties it
- Your hand always wins — switching Valpas off by hand keeps it off until the condition that started it goes away and comes back
- A global shortcut — flip the switch from any app, without opening anything. It uses Carbon's hot key API, so it needs no Accessibility permission
- Countdown in the menu bar — optional, in whole minutes, in a fixed-width slot so nothing beside it ever shifts
- Quiet by design — no Dock icon, no window, no notifications, no account. Launch at login, and it never asks for anything again
- Tiny and native — 1.8 MB, universal for Apple Silicon and Intel, written in Swift with SwiftUI, sandboxed
Nothing leaves your Mac, because nothing is collected
Valpas has no account, no analytics, no advertising and no crash reporting. It has no network access at all — the sandbox it ships in isn't granted any, so there is nothing to send even by accident. It asks for no permissions: not the camera, not the microphone, not your files, not Accessibility. The only thing it stores is your own preferences, on your own Mac.
What happens when the time is up
Nothing dramatic, on purpose. Valpas releases the assertion that was holding the Mac awake and steps out of the way; your Mac's own Energy Saver settings take over again, exactly as if Valpas had never run. In Keep display on mode it also holds back the screen saver for the length of the session — which means the Mac will not lock itself while the screen is being kept lit. If you want the screen to sleep and lock as usual while a long job keeps running, pick Allow display to sleep instead; it is one tap away in the same panel.