Keep a Mac awake: caffeinate, Amphetamine or Valpas?

A Mac that falls asleep in the middle of a render, an upload, a build or a backup is a small disaster you only notice afterwards. macOS gives you one tool for that out of the box, and the Mac App Store gives you several more. This page compares the three most people end up choosing between: the built-in caffeinate command, Amphetamine, and our own Valpas.

We make Valpas, so weigh our column accordingly. Amphetamine is a good app, and for some people it is the right answer.

The short version

• You live in the terminal and the job is a command: caffeinate. It is already installed and needs nothing.
• You want every trigger imaginable and a closed-lid mode for free: Amphetamine. It has been on the Mac App Store for years and is free.
• You want one switch, a visible countdown, no permissions and a tiny footprint: Valpas. Free, sandboxed, no network access at all, with a Pro option for the closed lid.

Side by side

	caffeinate	Amphetamine	Valpas
What it is	Command-line tool built into macOS	Menu bar app, Mac App Store	Menu bar app, Mac App Store, Homebrew or direct
Price	Free	Free	Free; Pro $4.99 for the closed-lid switch
Start a session	caffeinate -t 3600 in a terminal	Click the menu bar icon, choose a duration	Click the menu bar icon, choose 15 min to forever
Who owns the session	The terminal window; close it and the Mac can sleep	The app	The app; close every terminal and it keeps going
Countdown	None	In the menu, optional icon	In the panel and, optionally, in the menu bar in a fixed-width slot
Extend a running session	Start another one	Yes	+ 15 minutes at any time, with the end time shown
Let the screen sleep, keep the Mac working	-i flag	Yes	Yes, one of two modes
Start automatically	No	Many triggers: apps, downloads, drives, IP, and more	On power adapter, external display, microphone in use, or a chosen app running
Battery protection	No	Yes, configurable	Yes, ends the session on low charge
Lid closed	No	Yes, via the Amphetamine Enhancer helper	Free: no. Pro: yes, via a helper approved once in System Settings
Global shortcut	No	Yes	Yes, without Accessibility permission
Terminal control	It is the terminal	AppleScript	valpas 45m, valpas on, valpas off, valpas status (Homebrew and direct builds)
Permissions	None	None for the app; helper for closed-lid mode	None: sandboxed, no network, no Accessibility
Analytics or accounts	None	None	None
Size	Part of macOS	A few MB	About 2 MB, universal
macOS	Any	10.13 and later	13 Ventura and later

When caffeinate is enough

If the job is itself a command, caffeinate is the right tool and nothing else comes close. Prefix the command and the Mac stays awake exactly as long as it runs:

caffeinate -i rsync -a ~/Movies backup:/volume/

The limits show up when the job is not a command. There is no countdown, nothing starts it for you, and the session belongs to the terminal window. Close the window, or let the terminal app quit, and the Mac is free to sleep. Most people who reach for a menu bar app do so after that has bitten them once.

When Amphetamine is the better pick

Amphetamine's strength is breadth. It can start a session when a specific app launches, when a download is running, when a drive is mounted, when you are on a given network, and much more. It has a closed-display mode through its Enhancer helper, and it is free. If you want to script every corner of when your Mac sleeps, it is the more complete tool.

The cost of that breadth is the settings surface. There is a lot to read, and the closed-display feature comes with a warning of its own about heat.

When Valpas is the better pick

Valpas is built around one question: how long? Click the icon, pick 15 minutes, an hour, four hours or forever, and the panel tells you in plain words what is happening and when it ends. Hold Option and the durations turn into the next whole hours. Add 15 minutes when the job runs long.

The automatic rules are the ones we actually use: on the power adapter, with an external display attached, while the microphone is in use for a call, or while a chosen app such as a render or an upload is running. A battery guard ends the session before a keep-awake app can drain the machine. And a session belongs to the app, not to a window, so the valpas command in the Homebrew build can start it from a script and you can close the terminal afterwards.

What Valpas does not do: it has fewer triggers than Amphetamine, and the free version does not keep a MacBook awake with the lid shut. That one switch is Valpas Pro, a separate paid download, because the helper it needs is not allowed inside the Mac App Store sandbox. Sleep comes back by itself when the session ends, when the adapter is unplugged, when Valpas quits, or when the Mac runs too hot.

Get Valpas

Valpas is free on the Mac App Store, with Homebrew, or as a direct download from the Valpas page, which also has Valpas Pro. It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later and runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel.