Why does your Mac keep going to sleep?
Every Mac and MacBook has an idle timer. No mouse movement, no keyboard input for a few minutes, and macOS dims the display. A little longer and the whole system goes down. Downloads stop. Remote sessions drop. That render you started three hours ago? Gone.
Sleep is fine most of the time. Saves battery, keeps things cool. The problem is when it kicks in at exactly the wrong moment.
Why the built-in options fall short
You can drag the Energy Saver slider to "Never" in System Settings. That works, technically. But it's permanent until you remember to change it back. Leave it overnight on a MacBook and you'll wake up to a dead battery. There's no "stay awake only while I'm downloading" or "stay awake on weekdays between 9 and 5."
And if you're at a company where IT manages the machines, those settings might be locked behind an MDM profile. You can't touch them.
The better approach: Shake It On
Shake It On sits in your menu bar and nudges your mouse cursor every few seconds. Subtle, smooth movement. macOS sees it and resets the idle timer, same as if you'd bumped the mouse yourself.
Where this really matters: corporate Macs where Energy Saver is locked down, and remote desktop sessions where the host software has its own idle timeout that system-level tricks don't touch.
Smart conditions
The useful part is telling it when to run. You're not keeping your Mac awake 24/7. You're keeping it awake when it matters:
- Only Shake If audio is playing, a specific app is running, Wi-Fi is connected, an external display is attached, CPU usage is above a threshold, or an external disk is connected
- Paused When the display is locked, screensaver is running, Focus/DND is on, camera is in use, a certain app is in the foreground, or you're on battery
- Scheduled to certain hours and days
So your Mac stays awake during a 3-hour render, then sleeps normally when you walk away for the night. No babysitting.
Why mouse movement works better
Shake It On moves the cursor with smooth, natural-looking motion. Why does that matter?
- Corporate environments: IT locks down Energy Saver via MDM. Mouse movement bypasses that entirely because macOS treats it as genuine user activity.
- Remote desktop: VNC, SSH, Screen Sharing, TeamViewer all have their own idle timeouts separate from macOS. Mouse movement registers as real activity to the remote software, not just the OS.
- Messaging apps: Slack and Teams decide your status based on mouse and keyboard activity. System-level sleep prevention won't help here. Mouse movement will.
Getting started
Shake It On runs on macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Intel or Apple Silicon.
- Download and install from the website
- Grant Accessibility permission when prompted
- The app shows up in your menu bar
- Open Settings, pick your shake interval and conditions
- Done. It runs in the background from here.
Defaults work well out of the box: shake every 5 minutes, pause on battery and when the display is locked. Tweak from there if you want.