Cafe

Keep your Mac or PC awake, from the tray.
For downloads, renders, presentations, long builds, or just reading.

Website  |  Download

_{Café is Portuguese for coffee.}

Cafe is a coffee cup in the tray. Click it and your computer stays awake. Click it again and your computer goes back to sleeping the way it normally does. It's like PowerToys Awake or Amphetamine, and it runs on both Windows and macOS.

It's one small executable (about 0.5 MB) with nothing else to install, and it uses about 2 MB of memory while it sits there.

The cup

Outline cup	Off. Your computer sleeps as usual.
Filled cup	Awake. The computer won't go to sleep, but the screen can still turn off.
Cup with steam	Awake with the screen on. Nothing goes to sleep.
Small clock on the cup	A timer is running. The menu says when it ends.

On Windows, left-click toggles between off and awake, and right-click opens the menu. On macOS, clicking opens the menu, same as any other menu bar icon.

Running cafe again while it's already in the tray toggles the running copy instead of starting a second one. Pin it, bind it to a hotkey, or run it from a terminal. On macOS, opening Cafe.app again from Finder or Spotlight toggles it too.

The menu

The top line says what Cafe is doing right now. Under it:

Keep awake	Stays awake until you turn it off. While Cafe is on, this reads Turn off.
Timer	15 min, 30 min, 1 h, 2 h, 4 h or 8 h, or until one of the next six whole hours (17:00, 18:00 and so on). Then it turns itself off. The menu and the tooltip show how long is left.
While an app is open	Stays awake whenever an app on your list is running. More below.
Keep screen on	Keeps the display on too.

Settings holds the things you set once:

Stop on battery below	Never, 10%, 20%, 30% or 50%. The default is 20%. More below.
Notifications	Lets you know when a timer ends or a low battery stops Cafe.
Coffee facts	A coffee fact of the day in the menu. More below.
Run at login	Just for your user, no admin needed. On macOS it shows up in System Settings > General > Login Items, and you can turn it off there too. Move Cafe.app to Applications first.
Edit settings file…	Opens the config file in a text editor (⌘, on macOS). More below.

Last in Settings are the version you're running and Check for updates…, which opens Cafe's web page to tell you if a newer version is out (Cafe itself never goes online). Quit Cafe is ⌘Q on macOS.

Cafe remembers what it was doing. If you restart in the middle of a timer, the timer carries on. If it ran out while Cafe was closed, Cafe starts up off.

Keep awake while an app is open

Handy for things you'd forget to babysit: OBS, a game, a video call, a long build.

• Add an open app lists the apps you have open right now, by the names you know them by (OBS Studio, Visual Studio Code). Pick one to add it.
• Choose an app… opens the usual file picker, so you can add an app that isn't open yet. You can pick a command-line program like ffmpeg or rsync here too.
• Settings > Edit settings file… opens the config file, if you'd rather type names in.
• Click an app on the list to remove it.

Behind the scenes Cafe matches on the program's file name and ignores case and .exe, so OBS64.exe and obs64 count as the same app. While the list has anything on it, Cafe checks every 5 seconds (on macOS, apps are noticed the moment they open or quit), and the top of the menu tells you which app is keeping it awake.

Battery

If you're on battery and the charge drops below your limit, Cafe turns itself off and ignores your app list until you plug in again. You get one notification when that happens, and the menu shows the current charge. On a desktop with no battery, the option is greyed out.

It's on by default (at 20%) so a laptop left awake on battery doesn't run flat overnight.

Coffee facts

There's a new fact in the menu every day, like where coffee comes from, what a cortado is, or why it's called mocha. Click it to see the next one. The first time you turn Cafe on each day, you also get one as a notification. That's the only one you'll get that day.

There are forty of them, and each one has been fact-checked. If the popular story is just a legend, the fact says so.

Install

Windows

scoop bucket add kidchenko https://github.com/kidchenko/scoop-bucket
scoop install kidchenko/cafe

winget and Chocolatey packages are on the way.

Or grab Cafe-Setup.exe directly. Each release also ships a portable cafe-x.y.z-x64.exe that runs without installing; see Releases.

The app isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns you the first time you run it. Click More info, then Run anyway.

If you want notifications to show up as "Cafe", use the installer. Windows takes a notification's name from the Start menu shortcut, and only the installer makes one. The portable copy's notifications show up as PowerShell. The installer can also start Cafe when you sign in.

macOS

brew install --cask kidchenko/tap/cafe

Or download Cafe.dmg (Apple silicon and Intel), open it, and drag Cafe into Applications. It lives in the menu bar and doesn't show up in the Dock.

The app isn't notarized yet, so macOS blocks it the first time you open it. Homebrew takes care of that for you. Otherwise, do one of these once:

• Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway next to Cafe.
• Run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cafe.app

Move it into Applications before you do this. It won't work while the app is still inside the disk image.

Requirements

Windows 10 or later. macOS 11 or later.

How it works

Cafe never changes your power settings. It asks the OS to stay awake for now, and the OS drops that request as soon as Cafe takes it back, quits or crashes. So there's nothing to undo, and your computer can't get stuck awake.

	Awake	Screen on
Windows	SetThreadExecutionState(ES_SYSTEM_REQUIRED)	+ ES_DISPLAY_REQUIRED
macOS	IOKit assertion PreventUserIdleSystemSleep	PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep

You can see the request yourself while Cafe is awake:

powercfg /requests        # Windows, from an admin prompt: cafe.exe under SYSTEM (and DISPLAY)

pmset -g assertions       # macOS: an assertion named "Cafe"

Neither one stops sleep you ask for yourself, like Start > Sleep, the power button, or closing a MacBook lid on battery. Cafe leaves those alone on purpose.

Battery state comes from GetSystemPowerStatus on Windows and IOKit's power source list on macOS. The list of running apps comes from a Toolhelp snapshot on Windows and libproc on macOS. Cafe just reads these every so often. It doesn't hook into other programs, and nothing leaves your computer.

The cup is drawn in code (src/icon.rs). The images in assets/ and docs/img/ are generated from it with .\build.ps1 -Icons. The glyphs in the menu come from Lucide (ISC): assets/icons/make.sh rasterises them into assets/icons/glyph/, and assets/icons/LICENSES.md has the license.

Configuration

%APPDATA%\Cafe\config.json on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Cafe/config.json on macOS. You can do everything from the menu, but you can edit the file if you'd rather. Cafe notices changes within a few seconds, so there's no need to restart it.

{
  "mode": { "kind": "off" },
  "keepScreenOn": true,
  "durations": [15, 30, 60, 120, 240, 480],
  "batteryFloor": 20,
  "apps": ["obs64", "ffmpeg"],
  "appNames": { "obs64": "OBS Studio" },
  "notify": true,
  "facts": true
}

Key
durations	The Timer choices, in minutes. 1 minute to 1 week.
batteryFloor	Percent. 0 means never stop. Capped at 95.
apps	Process names. Case and .exe don't matter.
appNames	What the menu calls each app, keyed by process name. Filled in for you when you add an app from the menu.
mode	What Cafe is doing right now. Cafe ignores edits to it while it's running.

Troubleshooting

Cafe writes a log to cafe.log, next to the config. It notes every mode change, every app on your list opening and closing, and the battery limit kicking in:

INFO  mode=Indefinite trigger=None level=SystemAndScreen
INFO  obs64 is running
INFO  battery below 20%: ending Indefinite
INFO  toast shown: Battery at 19% / Cafe let go so your PC can sleep and save power.

My computer slept anyway. Look at the first line of the menu, which says why Cafe is off. Then run powercfg /requests or pmset -g assertions while it's awake. If Cafe shows up there and the computer still sleeps, something asked for sleep directly, like closing the lid, a scheduled task or the power button. Cafe doesn't override those.

An app on my list isn't keeping it awake. Compare the name in the menu with the one in Task Manager's Details tab, or in Activity Monitor. The Processes tab shows a friendlier name, and that's not what Cafe looks for.

Notifications say "Windows PowerShell". You're running the portable exe. See Install. If you get no notifications at all, check Focus Assist or Do Not Disturb.

Opening Cafe again doesn't seem to do anything. It did. The second copy switched the running one on or off, then quit. Check the cup.

Build

winget install Rustlang.Rustup
choco install innosetup -y     # only for the installer

.\build.ps1                    # tests + release binary + installer, in dist\
.\build.ps1 -Run               # ...then launch it
.\build.ps1 -Choco             # ...plus the Chocolatey package
.\build.ps1 -Icons             # regenerate assets\icon.ico and the PNGs
.\build.ps1 -SkipInstaller     # binary only

./build.sh                     # tests + release binary + dist/Cafe.app
./build.sh --run               # ...then launch it in the menu bar
./build.sh --universal --dmg   # what a release ships: arm64 + x86_64, in a .dmg

All you need is the Rust toolchain. The cup, the menu and the logic are shared. Only the OS-specific parts are split: execution state vs IOKit, Toolhelp vs libproc, and WinRT toasts vs osascript.

cargo test covers everything that doesn't need a desktop: timers and clock labels, the battery limit, app-name matching, config parsing, the facts list and the icon drawing.

The landing page is docs/index.html, a single static file served by GitHub Pages from /docs.

Releasing

1. Bump version in Cargo.toml and add a section to CHANGELOG.md.
2. git tag vX.Y.Z && git push origin vX.Y.Z

The release workflow builds the DMG on macOS and the installer on Windows, puts both on a GitHub Release, and updates the Chocolatey and winget manifests with the new version and checksums:

• Chocolatey is pushed automatically when the CHOCO_API_KEY secret is set.
• winget: submit the manifest-winget artifact to microsoft/winget-pkgs, or use wingetcreate submit.
• Homebrew: kidchenko/homebrew-tap bumps Casks/cafe.rb itself, right away when the HOMEBREW_TAP_TOKEN secret is set and otherwise on its daily run.

If you run the workflow by hand from the Actions tab, it's a dry run. It builds everything and uploads it as artifacts, but doesn't publish anything.

Not yet

• Pick your coffee. Espresso, cappuccino, mocha and more as cup styles, plus a brewing animation while it's awake (#1).
• A signed, notarized Mac build. No more Gatekeeper step, and notifications would show up as Cafe.
• Code signing on Windows. No more SmartScreen warning.

License

MIT.