A lightweight macOS menu bar utility for controlling system and display sleep.
Sometimes you need your Mac to stay awake — a long download, a build, a render, a server you are running locally — without changing how your Mac sleeps for good. Kipless sits in the menu bar, holds that state for exactly as long as you ask, and gets out of the way.
| Mode | What stays awake |
|---|---|
| System | The Mac. The display may still turn off on its own schedule. |
| Display | The Mac and the display — for dashboards, reading, presentations. |
| Closed Lid | The Mac, even with the lid shut. |
Sessions run for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, or until you stop them. Quitting Kipless ends the session too.
Download Kipless.dmg from the latest release, open it, and drag
Kipless to Applications. Builds are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by
Apple. After that Kipless updates itself: Check for Updates… in Settings, or
turn on automatic checks and it will look for new versions on its own.
Keeping the Mac awake with the lid shut is a system setting, so macOS only lets
a background helper change it with your consent. The first time you start a
Closed Lid session, Kipless asks you to allow it under System Settings ›
General › Login Items. The helper accepts no commands beyond the three fixed
pmset operations that mode needs, and the setting is restored when the session
ends.
Outside a session Kipless changes nothing about how your Mac sleeps.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Localized in English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, Deutsch, Français, Español, Italiano and Português (Brasil).
No account, no analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting. The one thing that uses the network is an update check, and Kipless only goes online when you ask it to — automatic checks stay off until you turn them on.
The native Kipless.xcodeproj is the single source of truth — make project
changes in Xcode so the checked-in project stays that way.
xcodebuild -project Kipless.xcodeproj -scheme Kipless testTwo scripts cover what unit tests cannot. ./scripts/test-integration.sh checks
the real IOKit power assertions, and ./scripts/preflight.sh is the release
gate: tests, Release build, assertions, app smoke test, bundle metadata and
signature checks. Both run on a Mac, and the closed-lid integration tests use
the signed helper.
User-facing copy lives in the String Catalog at
Kipless/Resources/Localizable.xcstrings.