Amphetamine

Category

Description of App

Amphetamine is a little app that lives in your menu bar. With Amphetamine, you can effortlessly override your energy saver settings and keep your Mac awake. Features: - Keep your Mac (and optionally its display and drives) awake - Choose from numerous activation time presets, or enter your own - Keep your Mac awake while specific apps are running - Schedule activation/deactivation for specific times of the day - Activate/deactivate with a single click in the menu bar - Activate automatically at launch login - Activate when connected to specific WiFi networks - Keep drives (HDDs/SSDs) connected to your Mac awake - Use global hotkeys for activation/deactivation - Receive alerts while Amphetamine is running or when it activates/deactivates - Auto-deactivate when your Mac's battery drops below a set threshold - Auto-activate when you connect your Mac's power adapter - Allow/prevent screen saver - Use your own status icons - Custom notification sounds - AppleScript support Amphetamine supports Retina displays and OS X's dark mode. Amphetamine is 100% free (no ads, no in-app purchases). After you launch Amphetamine, you must activate it by clicking on its menu icon. If you do not activate Amphetamine, your Mac will sleep normally, per your energy saver settings. Please note that keeping your Mac laptop awake while the lid is closed is not possible for an app from the Mac App Store. Amphetamine requires OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or higher.

Version

3.0.2

Free or Paid

Free

Version Of macOS App Was Tested On

10.12 Sierra

Accessibility Comments

VoiceOver appears to read all the interface elements perfectly. The only issues I have noticed are a few unlabeled buttons in the tutorial and in some setting screens.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Other Comments

I've been searching for an application to override the default sleep behavior in Mac OS X. This program appears to be the best and most customizable.

Recommendations

3 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Carlos Taylor 4 years 6 months ago

Options

Comments

By Aadira menon on Monday, November 21, 2016 - 12:43

Amphetamine is best and most customizable.

By Chelsea on Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - 12:43

This appears to be a very significant update. While my triggers migrated successfully, I am having trouble making new triggers and activating them. For example, it appears now that you can only choose one type of criterion for a trigger--so I couldn't say, while this wifi network is connected and this app is running, for example. Please, someone prove me wrong!

Also, when you select the "While file is downloading" option from the menu bar, you are presented with a standard file open dialog, but the dialog is not clear as to why it is there. If anyone else is confused by this as I first was, please respond and I'll add that to the list of things to email the developer about.

Thanks for any further commenting on this topic,
Chelsea

By Chris on Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - 12:43

You can specify multiple conditions for a trigger. Select the item you want from the menu button and check the checkbox to enable it. If necessary, customize the settings to your liking. Now go back to the list of conditions and select something else. Check the checkbox and customize the second condition. Repeat until you're satisfied. Your trigger will now fire when all conditions you've specified are met.

I'm not sure about the while downloading option. I'll write to the developer about that as well.

By Carlos Taylor on Tuesday, April 21, 2020 - 12:43

I just stumbled upon this app in the Mac App Store yesterday. I'm really impressed with it's features and the level of VoiceOver accessibility. I once tried caffeine but quickly got rid of it. I simply wasn't happy with it. This is far superior to what Caffeine was. Perhaps Caffeine has been updated since I last tried it, but Amphetamine far exceeds my expectations so I have no need to look further.