Read the Shake It On Status (and Debug It)

A glance at the dropdown

Open Shake It On's menu-bar dropdown. The first line is the rich status — it tells you exactly which condition is winning right now. Not "Active" or "Paused" generically, but which specific rule.

If something's surprising — Shake It On isn't shaking when you thought it should, or it's shaking when you thought it shouldn't — the status line is the first place to look.

"Active" lines

When Shake It On is currently shaking, the status names the most specific reason it's allowed to shake:

• Active — no specific Only Shake If condition won (or none enabled).
• Active — CPU 87% > 75% threshold — the CPU condition is satisfied; current and threshold are shown.
• Active — Final Cut Pro is running — the app-match condition won.
• Active — audio is playing — Music.app is playing.
• Active — on Office Wi-Fi — SSID match is satisfied; the actual network name is shown.
• Active — VPN is connected — a VPN tunnel is up.
• Active — IP address matches — your active IPv4 is inside one of your CIDRs.
• Active — external display connected — a monitor is attached.
• Active — external disk connected — a removable disk is mounted.
• Active — Time Machine drive connected — a USB device matches the name list.
• Active — AirPods paired — a Bluetooth device matches the name list.
• Active — Wi-Fi is connected — generic Wi-Fi check passed.

"Paused" lines

When Shake It On is enabled but not currently shaking because of a Paused When condition:

• Paused — display is off or locked
• Paused — screensaver is running
• Paused — Focus is on
• Paused — camera is in use
• Paused — Zoom is active — frontmost-app match.
• Paused — on battery (18%) — battery percent is shown.
• Paused — outside schedule — current time is outside your configured window.

"Waiting for…" lines

Three states where Shake It On is enabled but neither active nor paused — it's waiting for something:

• Waiting for idle — Activation is set to "Only when idle" and you've been touching the keyboard or mouse recently.
• Waiting for conditions — at least one Only Shake If condition is enabled but none are passing right now.
• Waiting for accessibility — Shake It On needs the Accessibility permission to move the cursor (Settings → Grant Access).

Snooze / Stay-awake-for / Disabled

Three explicit user states:

• Snoozed until 3:45 PM — followed by a second line with Snoozed — 12:34 live MM:SS countdown.
• Stay awake — forced active — followed by Stay awake — 43:21 countdown.
• Disabled — the master toggle is off.

Using the status to debug

A few common surprises and what the status reveals:

• "It's not shaking and I don't know why" → status will say Waiting for conditions (a rule isn't satisfied) or Paused — <reason>. Now you know which.
• "It's shaking on battery and I didn't expect that" → check the battery threshold in Paused When. If the threshold is on and you have plenty of charge, the pause won't trigger until the level drops.
• "The countdown isn't ticking" → that's only shown for Snooze and Stay-awake-for. The header re-renders once a second only while one of those is active.