Don’t Let Your Mac Fall Asleep
Written on July 23, 2008 by Jenny Kortina and 15 people have commented
I watch a lot of videos on various sites including Youtube, Google video, etc., and one of my main gripes with the sites is that video does not make your mac think it is busy so it constantly falls asleep while playing a single clip.
In comes the freeware application Caffeine.
Caffeine is a tiny program that puts an icon in the right side of your menu bar. Click it to prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep, dimming the screen or starting screen savers. Click it again to go back. Hold down the Command key while clicking to show the menu.
Caffeine is one of my must have applications and can be downloaded here.
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#1 Robosheep says:How is this any better than just setting custom energy saver preferences?
#2 Skywisenight says:Because it’s right on your bar, and it’s a on/off toggle. I use this all the time as well.
#3 Greg Ramsaran says:Seems like you need more work to do… oh wait, i should get back to work also…
#4 Peter says:I’m a fan as well, beats regular trips to the energy-saver prefpane hands down !
But I think the (new) icon is extremely lame : looks like it was drawn by a toddler. Why not a simple stylized ‘eye’ : open = sleep disabled, closed = sleep permitted.
( before you ask : yes, I’m graphically challenged )
#5 amusicsite says:Great idea, I like having the screen saver on but hate it when I’m watching a 10 minute long thing on youtube and the screen saver kicks in.
It’s a real pain going into the prefs to change it each time and it takes me agaes to bother changing it back, so this is just what I need.
#6 Dave Shaw says:I use this all the time - very very handy. Highly recommended.
#7 Galley says:Jolt is another nice one, with custom timers.
http://www.driftinglight.com/drifting_light/Jolt.html
#8 Tim says:This is great except I find I often leave it on accidentally, meaning the screen is left on unnecessarily, or it’s off and I’m not reminded to turn it on until the screen dims the first time.
Perhaps it would be better if the screen saver simply was set to a longer delay if you’re in a certain app, eg safari.
#9 Tammy says:I’ve used Caffeine for quite some time and it’s just terrific - simple, no futzing. It just works. That’s my kind of mini-app.
#10 Alex says:Jolt is 5 bucks, Caffeine is free. I’ll stick with Caffeine.
#11 Ken says:Tim - Just use the option to enable for xx minutes … this way you don’t have to remember to set it back.
#12 Abhimanyu Chirimar says:For some reason, I prefer InsomniaX.
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