Stop Your Mac from Sleeping While Reading: Introducing `caffeinate`

Ever been engrossed in a long read only to find your Mac screen suddenly locked? Frustrating, right? Worry not, fellow reader, for there's a simple solution using a built-in macOS tool called caffeinate.

Preventing Sleep with caffeinate

Open your Terminal app and type the following command, replacing 3600 with the desired number of seconds you want your Mac to stay awake:

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caffeinate -u -t 3600

This will prevent your Mac from entering sleep mode for one hour (3600 seconds).

Keeping the Display On

If you also want to prevent the display from dimming or going to sleep, use the -d flag:

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caffeinate -d -t 3600

Remember to adjust the 3600 value for your desired timeframe.

What is caffeinate?

caffeinate is not a third-party application but a native command-line utility built into macOS. It allows you to temporarily disable sleep and screen dimming functionalities.

caffeinate creates "assertions" that modify your system's sleep behavior. By default, it considers factors like display sleep, system idle time, disk activity, and user inactivity. These assertions expire when the caffeinate command finishes running.

Enjoy Uninterrupted Reading

So, the next time you're diving into a long read, use caffeinate to keep your Mac awake and your screen lit for as long as needed. Happy reading!