Stay Awake For…

When conditions are too clever

Shake It On's smart conditions are great when they fit your work. But sometimes you just need: "Stay awake. For the next hour. Don't ask questions."

That's what Stay awake for… is for. Pick a duration, the Mac stays on for that long. No condition gates, no ifs, no maybes.

Trigger it from the menu bar

Open Shake It On's menu-bar dropdown.
Hover over Keep Awake For.
Pick a duration: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, Until Tomorrow Morning, or Custom…

The dropdown header shows a live countdown ("Forced active — 43:21 remaining") so you know exactly how much time is left.

Stay awake for… ships in Shake It On 1.1.0. Force-active timer with a live countdown in the menu bar.

Stay awake for vs. Snooze

These are mirror-image timers:

Snooze says "stop shaking for the next N minutes." Use it during meetings, lunch, calls.
Stay awake for says "force-shake for the next N minutes, ignoring all the Only Shake If gates." Use it for downloads, renders, presentations.

Bypasses Only Shake If

Stay awake for is a manual override. While it's active, Shake It On ignores every Only Shake If condition you've set up — no need for the right app to be open, the right Wi-Fi, the right CPU load. The Mac just stays awake.

It still respects Paused When. If your camera turns on for a video call, Shake It On still pauses; that's deliberate, because Paused When reflects "you don't want a twitching cursor right now" regardless of your intent to keep the Mac running.

"Until tomorrow morning"

The most useful preset for overnight work. Until tomorrow morning sets the timer to the next 8:00 AM in your local calendar. Flip it on at 11 PM tonight; it runs through to 8 AM tomorrow.

Pair with Allow display to sleep so the screen turns off but the download / render / backup keeps going.

Stop early

Done before the timer fires? Open the menu bar dropdown, hover over Keep Awake For, and click Stop at the bottom. The countdown clears immediately and Shake It On goes back to its normal condition-driven behavior.

Note

Custom durations remember your last value. The "Custom…" panel starts pre-filled with whatever duration you last entered, so repeated custom times are one tap.

From a Shortcut or URL

Wire Stay awake for into any automation:

Shortcuts intent: Keep Mac Awake
URL scheme: shakeiton://keep-awake?minutes=60
AppleScript: tell application "Shake It On" to keep awake for 60

Useful when paired with calendar events: "block: rendering" → fire a Shortcut → Keep Mac Awake for the duration of the block.

Keep your Mac awake the easy way.

Shake It On lives in your menu bar and uses organic mouse movement to prevent sleep. Set it once and forget it.

One-time purchase. No subscription. Free updates forever.

Force Your Mac Awake for an Hour (or Two, or Until Tomorrow Morning)