SleepSleuth lives in your menu bar and shows you exactly which apps and processes are keeping your Mac awake — and lets you keep it awake on purpose.
Keep your Mac awake for the apps that need it. Select any running app or command-line tool and SleepSleuth holds a sleep assertion on its behalf for as long as it runs — no caffeinate hacks needed.
Pins persist across relaunches. When a pinned app comes back, SleepSleuth automatically re-applies the assertion. CLI tools like ffmpeg or rsync are tracked by executable path.
The assertion detail view now shows a real-time elapsed counter so you can see exactly how long a process has been holding your Mac awake.
Polls macOS power assertions every few seconds so you always have the latest picture — yellow icon means something is active, default means all clear.
See the process name, PID, assertion type, and a live elapsed-time counter for each active assertion — all at a glance.
Pick any running app or command-line tool from the inline process picker and SleepSleuth prevents sleep on its behalf. Pins survive relaunches and reactivate automatically.
Get a native macOS notification whenever a new sleep-preventing assertion appears, so nothing sneaks by unnoticed.
For user-owned processes, get a ready-to-use kill command and one-click Terminal access to reclaim your Mac’s sleep.
Built with SwiftUI for macOS 14+. No Electron, no web views, no telemetry. Runs quietly in the menu bar with minimal resource usage.
Get SleepSleuth from the Mac App Store. It runs quietly from your menu bar with no setup required.
The icon turns yellow whenever something holds your Mac awake. Click to see the full list with details and live durations.
Drill into any process to see details or kill it. Pin apps that need to keep your Mac awake — SleepSleuth handles the rest.
Free and built for macOS 14+.
Get it on the Mac App Store