Shake at the office, sleep at home
If you carry your MacBook between locations — office, home, co-working space, conference — you probably want different keep-awake behavior in each. The cleanest signal of "where am I" is the Wi-Fi network you're on.
Shake It On's SSID match condition turns Wi-Fi network names into a switch. Match a specific SSID? Shake. Don't match? Stay quiet.
How to set it up
- Open Settings (menu bar → Settings…).
- Scroll to Only Shake If.
- Turn on Wi-Fi is connected.
- An indented sub-toggle appears: Only when SSID matches. Turn it on.
- Type a comma-separated list of network names:
home, office, conference - Grant the Location permission when prompted.
Names are matched case-insensitively as substrings. home matches Home Wi-Fi 5G and HomeOffice.
Why Location?
Reading the current Wi-Fi network name on macOS 14+ requires the Location permission. Apple gates SSID access behind Location to prevent apps from fingerprinting users by network proximity.
Shake It On uses the permission for one purpose: reading the SSID when you've enabled SSID match. There's no GPS access, no background location, no telemetry. The condition only fires when the toggle is on.
Useful match lists
- Office only: the SSIDs of your work and one or two regular conference rooms. Pair with day-of-week scheduling (Mon–Fri) for a clean "only at work" rule.
- Hotel + office + home: any place you actually work from. Paid Wi-Fi networks at airports often have generic names — match those if you want airport-lounge keep-awake.
- Tethered hotspots: match your phone's hotspot name (and your spouse's) so Shake It On only runs when you're intentionally on a personal hotspot, not a random public network.
vs. VPN match, vs. IP-range match
Shake It On has three "where am I" signals:
- SSID match — when the network name is the cleanest signal.
- VPN connected — when "am I on the company VPN" is the right rule.
- IP address matches — when SSID names are ambiguous but IP ranges are unique (e.g., your office uses generic guest Wi-Fi names but issues IPs from a known CIDR).
You can stack them. SSID match for home networks, VPN for office, IP range for guest Wi-Fi at a partner office. All three checks pass OR'd together — at least one being true is enough.