CaffeineTimer
Pick a duration — 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes, or indefinitely — watch the live countdown in the menu bar, get a notification when it ends, and your Mac sleeps on its own. No triggers, no scripting: the simple keep-awake app — a modern alternative to Amphetamine and the original Caffeine.
Everything you need, nothing you don't.
One job, done cleanly. Click the cup, pick how long, and forget about it — CaffeineTimer releases the hold on its own when the time is up.
Pick a duration
A small menu with 15, 30, 60 and 120 minutes, plus indefinitely. One click and you're done — no fields to fill in.
Live menu-bar countdown
Open the menu any time to see exactly how long is left. The remaining time ticks down right there in the menu bar.
The cup turns red
Idle, the cup is a plain outline. While a timer runs it tints red — an at-a-glance signal your Mac is being held awake.
A notification when time's up
You get a confirmation when a timer starts and another the moment it expires — with a quiet beep fallback if notifications are off.
Apple's own power assertion
It uses the exact IOKit assertion the built-in caffeinate tool uses — the macOS-native way to prevent sleep.
No daemon, no helper
No background process, no login item, no launch agent. The whole app is the menu-bar cup — and only while it's running.
No dependencies
AppKit, IOKit and UserNotifications only — Apple's own frameworks. No third-party libraries baked in.
No telemetry
No accounts, no analytics, no phone-home. It can't track you because there's nothing in it to do the tracking.
Four steps and you're awake.
Click the coffee cup
CaffeineTimer lives only in the menu bar — no Dock icon, no window. Click the cup to open its menu.
Choose how long
Pick 15, 30, 60 or 120 minutes, or indefinitely. A power assertion starts and a notification confirms the timer is running.
Watch it count down
The cup turns red and the time remaining ticks in the menu bar. Pick a new duration to replace the current one, or choose Stop to end it early.
Your Mac sleeps on its own
When the timer expires the keep-awake is released, you get a notification, and your Mac goes back to sleeping normally. Nothing left running.
Download CaffeineTimer
Free and open source. Grab the latest release, or install it with Homebrew if that's your thing.
CaffeineTimer 1.0.0
Requires macOS 13 Ventura or later · Apple Silicon · signed & notarized.
Prefer the command line? Install it from the personal tap. Homebrew 6 asks you to trust a third-party tap once before it runs any code — so grant trust, then install:
brew trust --cask marcvig/tap/caffeine-timer
brew install --cask marcvig/tap/caffeine-timer
Good to know
macOS says it "cannot be opened" — what now?
CaffeineTimer is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it should open cleanly. If Gatekeeper still hesitates after a fresh download, right-click the app and choose Open once — macOS then remembers your choice and opens it normally from then on.
Does it drain my battery or CPU?
No. CaffeineTimer holds a single lightweight IOKit power assertion — the same mechanism Apple's own caffeinate tool uses — and ticks a small countdown. There's no background daemon, no helper process, and nothing running once a timer ends. You can confirm the hold yourself with pmset -g assertions.
How does it compare to Amphetamine, Caffeine, or KeepingYouAwake?
If you've used Amphetamine — a great app, though its last release was November 2023 — the original Caffeine, or KeepingYouAwake, CaffeineTimer covers the one thing most people actually want: keep your Mac awake for a set duration, with a live menu-bar countdown, then let it sleep on its own. No triggers to configure, no scripting, no rules engine. It holds the same macOS power assertion as the built-in caffeinate tool — just wrapped in a simple timer. No accounts, no telemetry, no nonsense.