One of the very few things that annoys me about my Mac is the way the screen dims, blacks-out or goes to sleep when left idle for a few minutes. Of course, I understand it’s done by Apple in order to preserve the life of the Mac but it’s rather annoying when you’re watching a YouTube clip and suddenly the screen dims or when you’re trying to watch a film and the screen goes to sleep. Some users also make the point that they don’t necessarily want their Macbook to go to sleep when they close the lid such as when they’re downloading. Therefore, here are five of the very best apps to kick your Mac’s ass:
Caffeine – Simple and effective, Caffeine installs a coffee bean in your top menu bar that you click once to activate and prevent any kind of sleep mode on your Mac. Click again to turn it off – simple as that! It doesn’t however stop your Mac from going to sleep when you close your Macbook which leads me onto the next app…
InsomniaX – Stops your Mac going to sleep under any circumstances, even when the lid is closed on your Macbook. Note that with the latest generation of Macbooks, you can run them with the lid closed as long as you have an external mouse and keyboard attached. Use it with caution though – it’s obviously not a good idea to leave a Macbook running with a closed lid for very long periods of time – Macs need a rest too sometimes!
Sleepless – Prevents your Mac from going to sleep without changing the system settings manually. You can schedule hibernation and sleeping times on Sleepless and its also been recently updated to prevent sleeping when closing Macbooks. Again, the developers warn that it should be used with care in order to avoid frying your Mac!
iWannaSleep – Takes control of when your Mac goes to sleep. Great for if you like to listen to music as you go to sleep but don’t want your Mac to also fall asleep. You can set the time after which iTunes is stopped, the computer is put to sleep, shut down or when a custom AppleScript is run.
Midnight – Great widget that gives you sleep control from your dashboard. Midnight can either put your Mac into its standard sleep mode or into hibernation mode. Standard sleep is where your Mac reduces its power consumption to a minimum by stopping its processor but preserving RAM while Hibernation copies RAM to your hard drive.
