Amphetamine 4+

Powerful keep-awake utility

William Gustafson

    • 4.8 • 2.4K Ratings
    • Free

Screenshots

Description

Welcome to Amphetamine, the most awesome keep-awake app ever created for macOS. Amphetamine can keep your Mac, and optionally its display(s), awake through a super simple on/off switch, or automatically through easy-to-configure Triggers. Amphetamine is extremely powerful and includes advanced features for those who need them, yet remains intuitive and easy-to-use for those who don't need all of the bells and whistles.


=== Click to Keep Your Mac Awake ===

Quickly start a keep-awake session from Amphetamine's menu to keep your Mac awake.

• Indefinitely, for a specified amount of time, or until a specified time
• While a file is downloading
• While a specific app is running

During a keep-awake session, choose to allow or prevent:

• Display sleep
• Screen saver activation
• System sleep when built-in display is closed
• Automated mouse cursor movement
• Locking of the screen

=== Advanced Automation ===

Create a Trigger to automatically keep your Mac awake.

• While an external display is connected
• While your Mac's display is being mirrored
• While a USB or Bluetooth device is connected
• While a specific app is running
• While a specific app is running and is frontmost
• While your Mac's battery is charging and/or when the battery is above a threshold
• While your Mac's power adapter is connected or disconnected
• While your Mac has a specific IP address
• While your Mac is on a specific Wi-Fi network
• While your Mac is connected to Cisco AnyConnect VPN service
• While your Mac is using a specific DNS servers
• While headphones or another audio output is in use
• While a specific drive or volume is mounted
• While your Mac's CPU is being utilized to a specific threshold
• When your Mac has been idle for a specific threshold


=== What's the Catch? ===

No catch. Amphetamine is 100% free. It's a gift from me to you. Enjoy!

• No advertisements
• No in-app purchases
• Nothing to unlock/no "pro" version
• No annoying prompts asking you to review Amphetamine
• No links for other paid apps
• No tracking
• No data-harvesting


=== What Else Does Amphetamine Do? ===

Amphetamine is the most powerful and customizable keep-awake utility ever created for macOS. Some other notable features are:

• Lock your Mac's screen after a period of inactivity
• Move the mouse cursor periodically
• Keep your MacBook awake while its display/lid is closed
• Keep your drive awake with Drive Alive
• AppleScript support
• Use your own menu bar icons
• Use your own notification sounds
• Allow your display to sleep while keeping your Mac awake
• Allow screen saver to run after a customizable period of inactivity
• Optional session time remaining display in the menu (with 12/24 hour support)
• Auto-end session if your Mac's battery is low
• Hot key support for starting/ending sessions, enabling disabling display sleep, and more


=== System Requirements + Other Details ===

• Amphetamine requires macOS 10.11 El Capitan or higher; some features require a higher version of macOS
• Amphetamine supports Retina displays and macOS dark mode.

What’s New

Version 5.3.2

=== Introducing Power Protect ===

In Amphetamine 5.3, a Closed-Display Mode script was introduced to address an issue on Apple Silicon Macs where connecting or disconnecting your Mac laptop from an external power source could cause unexpected session behavior. Running this script required use of Touch ID or an administrator's password.

Thanks to members of the Amphetamine community (Pitor and Joe), a way to run the script without authentication has been identified and implemented in Amphetamine 5.3.1. To run the script without authentication, you must download and install both the script and a configuration file. This feature is now known as Power Protect and is only needed/available on Apple Silicon Mac laptops.

Please note that Power Protect is not included directly in Amphetamine and requires a separate download and installation. When you start a Closed-Display Mode session on an Apple Silicon Mac, Amphetamine will ask you if you would like to Learn More about Power Protect. If you choose Learn More, you will be directed to a website where you can read about Power Protect and choose to install it, if desired.

=== Fixes ===

• Fixed a crash on macOS Sonoma related to Bluetooth privacy settings access

• Added warning when Amphetamine is running using Rosetta

• Fixed an issue where some Apple Silicon Macs could be identified as Intel

• Fixed an issue for sessions that start at app launch don't enable Closed-Display Mode

• Fixed an issue where the session time remaining or other text would overlap Amphetamine's icon in the menu bar

• Fixed an issue with a -50 Application Can't be Opened error that appeared on some older macOS versions

• Added additional logic/code around creating and releasing power assertions in an attempt to fix an issue where Amphetamine causes a Mac to sleep, disconnect from external displays and/or WiFi, or create a "flash" on external displays

• Added ability to uninstall scripts via Amphetamine (menu bar icon) → Feedback & Support → Uninstall Scripts...

• Added Location Services request for current WiFi network name access for Trigger sessions in macOS Sonoma

• Configured all of Amphetamine's alerts to be floating windows (show on top of other windows)

• Fixed an issue where some menu text was clipped in French localization

• Fixed an issue with Triggers not activating on some non-laptop Macs

• Fixed an issue where some IP address-based Trigger sessions would not end when expected

• Added Debug Mode

Ratings and Reviews

4.8 out of 5
2.4K Ratings

2.4K Ratings

occasional downloader ,

Thank you for this indispensible utility!

UPDATE 2: Glad to see that Apple is no longer threatening to pull Amphetamine from the App Store on the absurd ground that it somehow encourages substance abuse. (Given that this has been one of the most popular utilities on the App Store for years, I suspect some junior Apple employee or intern got stuck working over the holidays without adequate supervision.) The developer, who has created this stellar utility and provides regular updates as an ongoing free gift to the Mac-using community (and to Apple), didn't deserve to be treated like this.

UPDATE: I still love Amphetamine! I do have a very minor feature request—would it be possible to add a 90 minutes or 1.5 hours preset to the dropdown menu? It's not that big a deal to set it manually, but a preset would be handy.

Don't let the "price" fool you—this is a polished, indispensible utility that gets updated far more frequently than a lot of paid apps. The developer must have plenty of outside income, because he could easily charge a dollar or two for this and make pretty good money. But as long as he doesn't, we all owe big thanks to Mr. Gustafson for this wonderful gift, especially those of us who are students—we need productivity enhancements and don't have a lot of spare funds to spend on apps.

Developer Response ,

❤️

Firey432 ,

I love it! Very useful.

I honestly love this application. I’ve been using it since Caffeine was discontinued. At first, I thought it was a bad replacement but it turns out to be more fun and customizable. I love that I could change the icon and sounds. My only peeve is that the notification sounds aren’t working for me but I’m not sure why. I highly recommend it to people. I set it at work so I can work remotely without having to manually change my Mac’s system settings.

Edit: Per comment below by the developer, I spoke to him about the notification situation and I’m kind of disappointed that the sounds are completely removed. I undertsand that the menu bar icon indicates whether a timer is active or not, but assume you’re not sitting at your computer and you don’t see the icon, then the sounds would indicate when your computer would go to sleep. This applies to people like me who manually activates timers. Although it says on the changelog that it will be removed and no longer implemented, I really want to make it a suggestion to bring back the sound effects. I took off 1 star for it because it misled me, considering the options for notifications and sounds are still in the app, but no longer functions the way it used to. Again, this is a free app that is made very well so it’s probably a minor complaint to most people.

Developer Response ,

Contact support if you need assistance. I can't help you through the App Store. ❤️

PirateJesus ,

Great, but not sure how "While File is Downloading..." works

First off, I want to say that it's really stupid that Apple took away the separate display sleep and system sleep controls in the Energy Saver preferences. I'm thankful something like this exists.

As for the issue mentioned in the title: that option requires the user to select a file. When I use Firefox, downloads appear as two files: one file has the correct filename, but is 0 KB in size, while the other contains data, but has .part appended to the end of it. I'm not sure which one to open, or if either one will do.

Also, about 3 versions ago, when using Amphetamine on High Sierra, I set it to stay awake indefinitely (but allow the display to sleep), and it still went to sleep (my download was interrupted). I've taken to going in to Energy Saver and preventing the display from sleeping, then turning the display's brightness all the way down, while downloading large files. I haven't tested whether or not I still need to do that. I'm wondering if launching Energy Saver after starting an Amphetamine session overrides some of Amphetamine's session settings? Or if I need to turn off the password requirement when the display sleeps?

Developer Response ,

❤️ Contact support through the app. Happy to answer these questions.

App Privacy

The developer, William Gustafson, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy.

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More