How to Keep Your Mac Awake with the Lid Closed

Why does closing the Mac lid put it to sleep?

By default, macOS is designed to respect your power intentions. Closing the lid is treated as a signal that you're done working, so the system suspends. This behavior is deeply baked into macOS power management — the lid sensor triggers a sleep assertion that overrides most running processes.

However, macOS also exposes a public API for apps to hold wake assertions — essentially telling the OS "I'm still doing something important, don't sleep." Apple documents it as IOPMAssertionCreateWithName in IOKit, and the same mechanism powers the built-in caffeinate command. Apps like Caffeine, Amphetamine, and Hold My Lid all use this API. The difference is when and how intelligently they hold those assertions.

Apple's own answer for a shut lid is closed-display mode, which requires the Mac to be plugged in with an external display and a keyboard or mouse attached. Without those, a closed lid means sleep unless an app holds the right assertion.

Caffeine — The Classic Free Option

Caffeine is probably the most well-known Mac keep-awake app. It's free, open source, and brutally simple: click the menu bar icon to toggle it on, and your Mac stays awake. Click again to turn it off.

What Caffeine does well

• Zero learning curve — one click, always on
• Free and open source
• Tiny memory footprint
• Works reliably for keeping the display awake

Caffeine's limitations

• Manual only — you must remember to toggle it on and off every single time
• No lid-closed guarantee — on modern Apple Silicon Macs, Caffeine's standard wake assertion does not prevent sleep when the lid is fully closed. You need a stronger "system" assertion.
• No timer or schedule support
• No battery awareness — it'll happily drain your MacBook to 0%
• Not actively maintained (the original Caffeine project has been largely dormant)

Bottom line on Caffeine: Great for desktop Macs or for keeping the display awake during a presentation. If you need your MacBook to stay awake with the lid physically closed, Caffeine alone won't cut it on modern Apple Silicon hardware.

Amphetamine — The Feature-Rich Free Option

Amphetamine is a free Mac App Store app that has become the go-to recommendation for power users who need more than Caffeine. It supports the stronger PreventUserIdleSystemSleep assertion, which — when combined with having an external display or power source — can keep a MacBook awake with the lid closed.

What Amphetamine does well

• Free from the Mac App Store
• Holds the right system assertion to keep lid-closed Macs awake
• Scheduling (keep awake until a time, for N hours)
• Trigger-based sessions (app running, drive mounted, network connected)
• Battery percentage cut-off
• Screen saver mode so the display isn't blaring all night

Amphetamine's limitations

• No agent awareness — triggers fire when a process is running, not when it's actually doing work. Claude Code in the menu bar 24/7? Your Mac never sleeps.
• Manual management — you still have to remember to start and stop sessions, or configure trigger rules upfront
• No hooks into agent lifecycle — no way to know if Claude Code is mid-task vs. idle waiting for your next prompt
• Trigger logic can be complex to set up correctly for developer workflows

Bottom line on Amphetamine: The best free option if you want to keep your Mac awake on a schedule or timer. But if you're running AI coding agents, you'll end up either (a) leaving your Mac awake unnecessarily long, or (b) having to babysit it anyway.

Hold My Lid — The Smart Option for Developers

Hold My Lid was built specifically for the workflow that Caffeine and Amphetamine weren't designed for: you have AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI) running long tasks, you want to close the lid and walk away, and you want the Mac to sleep again automatically once the agents finish.

How Hold My Lid keeps your Mac awake with the lid closed

Hold My Lid uses the same documented macOS wake assertions as Amphetamine — the ones that actually work for lid-closed scenarios. But it's agent-driven: it holds the assertions only while a watched agent is actively doing work, and releases them the moment your agents go idle. Your Mac sleeps automatically when the job is done.

Key features

• Lifecycle hooks for Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode — not just "is the process running" but "is it currently working on something"
• Smart process detection for Cursor, Gemini CLI, Aider, and others
• Battery guardrails — configurable cut-off, "only when plugged in" mode, Low Power Mode respect
• Display control — turn the display off while agents run to save even more battery
• Notifications — get a banner + sound when your agents finish so you know when to check back in
• Global shortcut ⌥⌘L to toggle from anywhere
• One-time payment of $9.99, works on up to 3 Macs

Why this matters: Amphetamine can trigger when Claude Code is running, but Claude Code might be sitting idle waiting for your next prompt 90% of the time. Hold My Lid knows the difference via lifecycle hooks, so your Mac only stays awake when there's real work to do.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Which one should you use?

Frequently asked questions