Insomnia: an open eye with a round pupil and five lashes above it

Insomnia

Keep your Mac awake. Give the session an end time.

A macOS menu bar app for timed awake sessions. Insomnia is an eye icon that lives in your MacBook menu bar. It has no Dock icon and no main window. Set how long your Mac stays awake, choose what happens when the lid closes, and see when something could not be undone.

Website · Install · Using it · Lid close · Recovery · Security

MIT license macOS 26 or later Experimental source build

> **Use a stable, well-ventilated surface, not a closed bag.** Insomnia is > experimental. Recovery can fail, and a running timer is not a safety > guarantee. > [Validation status](docs/release-validation.md) · [Apple's ventilation guidance](https://support.apple.com/en-us/102336)

Illustrated menu-bar controls: enter Days, Hours, and Minutes, watch the countdown, and hold the end control to finish early. Click the eye or countdown to add time. Closing the lid is optional, and incomplete recovery needs attention.

## Install Requires macOS 26 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac. Paste this into your coding agent: ```text Install the latest stable Insomnia release by following https://github.com/krishhgg/Insomnia/blob/main/skills/install-insomnia/SKILL.md. If a step needs my password, give me the command to run in Terminal. ``` For the newest nightly, write "the newest Insomnia nightly prerelease" in place of "the latest stable Insomnia release". Nightlies are built from `main` on each day it has new commits. They have the newest code and may be broken. To install a release yourself, follow [docs/install.md](docs/install.md). It covers both channels, how to check the download, and `v0.1.0`, which installs differently. Settings > App shows the installed version, and "Check for updates" there tells you whether a newer release exists without installing anything. ### Build from source Needs Xcode with Swift 6.2 or later. Replace `v` with the latest stable tag, or a nightly tag for the newest code: ```bash git clone --branch v --depth 1 https://github.com/krishhgg/Insomnia.git cd Insomnia ./scripts/install.sh open "$HOME/Applications/Insomnia.app" ```
What the installer changes on your Mac The installer needs your password, because the sudoers rule is a system file. It installs: - The app, at `~/Applications/Insomnia.app`. - A **recovery agent**, a `launchd` job that runs every minute. If the app is gone when a session should have ended, the agent tries to undo the session's changes. - A **sudoers rule** at `/etc/sudoers.d/insomnia`. A sudoers rule decides who can run what with `sudo`. This one lets your user account, not just Insomnia, run these four commands without a password: ```text /usr/bin/pmset -a disablesleep 1 /usr/bin/pmset -a disablesleep 0 /usr/bin/pmset -b lowpowermode 1 /usr/bin/pmset -b lowpowermode 0 ``` Any program running as you can use that rule too, so review it before you install. [docs/install.md](docs/install.md#what-gets-installed) lists every file and explains how upgrades replace them.
## Using it 1. **Start.** Click the eye in the menu bar, enter days, hours and minutes, and press Enter. 2. **Add time.** Click the eye or the countdown during a session. 3. **End early.** Press and hold the end control next to the countdown. 4. **Settings and status.** Right-click the eye. Quit asks Insomnia to undo the session first, and it refuses while a change is still waiting to be undone. Saved audio for an output that isn't connected doesn't hold it up. Insomnia restores that output if it reconnects while the app runs, or at the next launch. You don't have to close the lid, and opening it doesn't end the session. On battery power, Insomnia turns on Low Power Mode below 40% and ends the session below 10%. Those are the defaults. You can change both in Settings, and an end floor of 0 turns the battery end off. The heat rules turn on Low Power Mode when the Mac gets seriously hot and end the session at critical heat. They are on by default, and Settings can turn them off. All of these rules only work while the app runs. Before your first session, check Settings. Then run a short session you can watch, and read `~/Library/Logs/Insomnia/insomnia.log` afterward. ## What happens when the lid closes

Illustrated Settings defaults: Slack, WhatsApp, and Discord on the freeze list, Docker's idle rule off, mute on. During a session, lid close applies configured actions; reopening attempts to resume verified owned freezes and restore saved audio. The session continues. Without an active session, lid changes do nothing.

During a session, closing the lid does each of these, and opening it tries to undo them. The timer keeps counting down while the lid is closed. - **Display and keyboard light go off.** Insomnia saves their brightness first. With sleep turned off, macOS no longer does this by itself. - **Apps on the freeze list are frozen.** Freezing sends an app's processes `SIGSTOP`, which pauses them until `SIGCONT` on lid open. The list starts with Slack, WhatsApp and Discord. "Freeze every other app" is off by default. Even when on, it skips meeting, recording and dictation apps: Zoom, Teams, Webex, FaceTime, Wispr Flow, Granola, Otter, OBS and Loom. - **Audio is muted.** Lid open unmutes each output Insomnia muted, even if you switched to another one. - **Low Power Mode turns on.** It turns off when the lid opens, unless a battery or heat rule still needs it. - **Docker Desktop is frozen when no container runs.** This one is off by default. On Mac laptops with Apple silicon or a T2 chip, closing the lid disconnects the built-in microphone in hardware. Recording a meeting with the lid closed needs AirPods or an external mic. [docs/lid-close.md](docs/lid-close.md) has the details: how Docker is checked, how brightness is restored, the one-time settings change when you upgrade, and how to test lid actions without closing the lid. ## How recovery works

The app and a launchd backstop coordinate through a shared lock and recovery journal. The app handles normal cleanup. The backstop checks every minute and attempts due recovery, leaving valid active sessions alone. Failed or unreadable recovery evidence stays on disk; saved audio needs the app and unconfirmed stopped processes need inspection.

Insomnia writes each change to a **recovery journal**, a file on disk, before it makes the change. Ending the session tries to undo what the journal lists. If the app crashes or quits, the recovery agent tries the same once the session's end time has passed. Some things need you: - The recovery agent can't restore audio. Open Insomnia again for that. - The recovery agent doesn't watch the battery or the temperature. - Insomnia only unfreezes a process it can prove it froze. A frozen process it can't prove stays frozen until you check it. If the menu shows a recovery warning, deal with it before you leave the Mac alone. [docs/recovery.md](docs/recovery.md) explains each case. ## Optional extras
iPhone hotspot handoff and tmux If the Wi-Fi drops during a session, Insomnia can join your iPhone's hotspot. Set System Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to join hotspots to Automatically, then enter the hotspot's name and password in Insomnia's Settings. The password stays in your login Keychain. Insomnia asks for Location Services access, because macOS requires it to read Wi-Fi network names. It never reads your location. After you reinstall Insomnia, enter the password again. After 90 seconds without a network, Insomnia can also type `continue` into a tmux pane running a coding agent. It only types into panes you list in Settings and mark yourself: ```bash tmux set-option -p -t @insomnia-nudge on ``` It doesn't press Enter unless you turn that on. Mark a pane you don't type in. [docs/extras.md](docs/extras.md) has the details.
Chrome, Chromium, Arc and Comet throttling These browsers slow down windows that macOS reports as hidden, which includes every window while the lid is closed. If a running browser lacks `--disable-backgrounding-occluded-windows` or `--disable-renderer-backgrounding`, the right-click menu offers "Relaunch [browser] unthrottled". It asks first, because relaunching quits the browser, and tabs come back only if the browser reopens them on startup. Some web apps may still stop with the lid closed. [docs/extras.md](docs/extras.md#chrome-chromium-arc-and-comet-throttling) has the details.
Configuration and privacy Settings live in `~/Library/Application Support/Insomnia/config.json` and logs in `~/Library/Logs/Insomnia/`. Insomnia sets both folders and their files to owner-only permissions. It leaves symlinks and access control lists (ACLs, extra per-account permission entries) as they are, so another account can still have access through one. Logs can contain Wi-Fi names, process details and tmux targets, so check them before you share one. [docs/extras.md](docs/extras.md#configuration-and-privacy) has the details.
## Uninstall From your checkout: ```bash ./scripts/uninstall.sh # removes the app, the agent and the sudoers rule ./scripts/uninstall.sh --purge # also removes settings and logs ``` From an unpacked release zip, run `./uninstall.sh` in its folder instead. The uninstaller undoes any open session first and stops if it can't. [docs/install.md](docs/install.md#uninstall) has the details. ## Development ```bash swift build swift test ``` The tests use fakes and temporary folders, so they never change your power settings. See [Contributing](CONTRIBUTING.md), [Security reporting](SECURITY.md), [Release validation](docs/release-validation.md) and [Design notes](docs/spec.md). ## Star history Star history for krishhgg/Insomnia ## License [MIT](LICENSE)