Quick comparison
| Feature | Shake It On | Jiggler |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99 one-time | Free (open source) |
| Movement type | Organic sine-wave | Simple wiggle |
| Smart conditions | 12+ conditions | Idle detection only |
| Menu bar UI | ✓ | ✗ |
| Scheduling | Hours + days of week | ✗ |
| Camera detection | ✓ | ✗ |
| Focus/DND awareness | ✓ | ✗ |
| Battery awareness | ✓ | ✗ |
| Snooze | ✓ | ✗ |
| Shortcuts integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Active development | ✓ | ✗ (legacy) |
| macOS 14+ native | ✓ | Works, but not optimized |
About Jiggler
Jiggler by Stick Software deserves credit as one of the original Mac mouse jigglers. It's been around for well over a decade and it did the job when there weren't many other options. You set an idle timeout, and when your Mac sits idle for that long, Jiggler wiggles the cursor to prevent sleep.
That's pretty much all it does. There's no menu bar icon, no conditions beyond idle detection, no scheduling, and no awareness of what's happening on your Mac. The developer has described it as legacy software, and the codebase hasn't seen meaningful updates in years.
It still runs on recent versions of macOS, which is a testament to how simple the underlying mechanism is. But "still runs" is different from "actively supported." If Apple changes something in a future macOS release that breaks it, there's no guarantee of a fix.
Where Shake It On wins
Jiggler answers one question: "Is the user idle?" Shake It On answers a bunch of them: Is the user idle? Are they on battery? Is the camera on? Is it a weekday? Is a specific app running? Is Focus mode active?
That difference matters because keeping your Mac awake isn't always appropriate. You want it awake during a long render or a remote desktop session, not at 11 PM when you forgot to close your laptop.
Concrete things Shake It On has that Jiggler doesn't:
- 12+ smart conditions: Pause on battery, when camera is in use, when Focus/DND is active, when a specific app is in the foreground, and more
- Scheduling: Set hours and days of the week so it only runs during work hours
- Menu bar presence: See at a glance whether it's active, paused, or snoozed
- Natural movement: Sine-wave motion instead of a basic wiggle, so the cursor movement looks organic
- Snooze: Quick pause with presets (15m, 30m, 1h, 2h)
- Shortcuts integration: Automate it with macOS Shortcuts
The verdict
Jiggler was a good tool for its time. If you're already using it and all you need is basic idle-triggered mouse wiggling, it still works. No reason to fix what isn't broken.
But if you want something that's actively maintained, has smart conditions, runs in the menu bar, and won't keep your Mac awake when it shouldn't be, Shake It On is the upgrade. The $9.99 one-time price gets you an app that's built for how people actually use their Macs today.