GitHub - Kuberwastaken/caffeineOSS: ☕ Caffeinate your Mac — a tiny menu-bar app that keeps macOS awake. ~120 lines of Swift, zero deps, no kexts. Built locally because MDM blocked everything else.

A tiny menu-bar app that stops your Mac from falling asleep. One click. Filled cup = awake. ☕

The story (or: why this exists at all)

I wanted the classic coffee-cup-in-the-menu-bar thing. Easy, right? Except my work laptop's MDM had other plans:

1. Tried KeepingYouAwake → blocked.
2. Tried the classic Caffeine app → blocked.
3. Tried dropping a LaunchAgent → turns out the MDM had made ~/Library/LaunchAgents root-owned. Blocked.

At that point it was personal. Downloaded apps get a quarantine flag and have to clear notarization + an endpoint-management allowlist — but a binary you compile locally has no quarantine flag and isn't a pre-built app the MDM recognizes. So I got bored, opened a .swift file, and wrote my own in ~120 lines.

CaffeineOSS wasn't a real project. It's not on Homebrew, it wasn't on GitHub, the name didn't exist. I just built it because I was bored and the corporate firewall made me angry. Now it's here. ☕

What it actually does

When you flip it on, CaffeineOSS does exactly what you'd type by hand — nothing exotic, just Apple's own tools:

caffeinate -dimsu              # prevent display / idle / disk / system sleep + keep "user active"
sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1   # also stop the forced sleep that happens when you CLOSE THE LID

• It launches caffeinate -dimsu as a child process and keeps it alive for as long as you're awake.
• It flips pmset disablesleep so the Mac stays awake even with the lid shut (great for leaving claude running overnight). That part needs root, so you get one native admin prompt per toggle.

Everything is undone the moment you toggle off, when a timer expires, or when you quit — so the laptop sleeps normally again the second you're done.

• 🟤 Outline cup = sleep allowed (normal)
• ☕ Filled cup = staying awake (lid open and closed)
• ⏱ Timed modes — awake for 30 min / 1 h / 2 h / 5 h, then auto-off
• 🪶 Featherweight — one Swift file, zero dependencies, no Dock icon (menu-bar only)

Install (build it yourself — that's the whole point)

You need the Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install). Then:

git clone https://github.com/kuberwastaken/caffeineOSS.git
cd caffeineOSS
./build.sh
open CaffeineOSS.app

build.sh compiles main.swift, wraps it in a proper .app bundle, and ad-hoc signs it locally — so there's no quarantine flag for an MDM/Gatekeeper to choke on.

Start at login (survives reboots)

The clean way is a LaunchAgent — but if your MDM has locked down ~/Library/LaunchAgents (mine had), use the per-user Login Items list instead, which doesn't need that directory:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to make login item at end with properties {path:"'$PWD'/CaffeineOSS.app", hidden:true, name:"CaffeineOSS"}'

Verify it took:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item'

You can also do this by hand in System Settings → General → Login Items → +.

Uninstall

# stop it
osascript -e 'quit app "CaffeineOSS"'
# remove from login items
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to delete login item "CaffeineOSS"'
# delete the build
rm -rf CaffeineOSS.app

No-install fallback

If even a locally-built app gets blocked, macOS ships the original. Zero install, zero app:

caffeinate -d        # keep display awake until Ctrl-C
caffeinate -t 3600   # awake for 1 hour
caffeinate make      # awake until `make` finishes

CaffeineOSS is really just a friendly coffee cup glued on top of that idea.

Project layout

caffeineOSS/
├── main.swift        # the entire app (~120 lines)
├── build.sh          # compile → .app bundle → ad-hoc sign
├── assets/
│   └── banner.svg    # the cup up top
└── README.md

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Do whatever you want with it. ☕

_{Built because I was bored and the corporate firewall made me angry.}