Other times, you may prefer to set the duration you would like to prevent the Mac from sleeping. While running, caffeinate will leave a blank prompt.įor some situations, such as while watching a movie, this may be fine. To stop the process from running, you can press Ctrl+ C which will instantly end the process, and return you to the command prompt. While running, caffeinate will prevent your Mac from sleeping.

When run, the cursor will move down to a blank line where it will stay until you tell the command to stop running or close the terminal. The simplest way to use this command is to run the following command in the terminal. The caffeinate command is used to prevent a Mac from going to sleep. Let’s take a look at how to use this command, and some alternatives for older machines. With OS X 10.8, Mountain Lion, we are able to stop our Macs from sleeping for a period of time from our command line with the caffeinate command. When in these situations, it can be inconvenient to look through System Preferences > Energy Saver until you find the settings needed and then you must remember to re-enable your original settings when you are done.

Yet there are times you may want to stop your Mac from sleeping such as when you’re watching a movie, cloning a large repository from GitHub, or need to let a large download finish from your favorite website. Computers sleep as a way to save energy and prevent unnecessary wear on your machine's hardware.

Executing a command in r mac os