Keep your Mac awake for Time Machine and long backups

Time Machine and other long backups are quiet work: the screen sits idle, the Mac looks free, and Energy Saver steps in. Sleep mid-backup means a long job restarts, a volume drops, or you walk away thinking it finished when it did not. Keepresso can hold the system awake for the backup window, and optionally keep the backup disk from spinning down.

One-click: Backup Running preset

Keepresso ships a Backup Running preset that holds keep-awake while a Time Machine backup is in progress.

1. Click the cup → Preferences → Triggers (or open the preset menu from the menu).
2. Apply Backup Running.
3. Leave trigger gating on.

When Time Machine starts, Keepresso starts a session; when the backup ends, the session ends and normal sleep returns. Full trigger reference: smart triggers.

External backup disks

If the backup target is a USB, Thunderbolt, or network volume:

1. Add a Volume mounted condition for that disk so the Mac stays awake while the drive is connected.
2. Enable disk keep-alive for the volume so the drive itself does not idle-spin-down during the job.

Those two work together: the Mac stays up, and the disk stays ready. Walkthrough: Keep an external drive awake.

Overnight and schedule

For backups that always run in a window:

• Use a Schedule condition (for example 01:00–06:00 every day) so keep-awake is only armed overnight.
• Or start a timed session with Until a Time before you leave: timed sessions.

On a MacBook, combine with closed-display mode if the machine sits closed on power while Time Machine runs.

Other backup tools

The Time Machine preset is specific to Time Machine. For Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper, rsync, Arq, or a custom script:

Set conditions to any if either "tool running" or "disk mounted" should hold the session.

Battery and heat

Backups on battery are hard on the pack. Prefer:

• On AC Power as an extra condition (all of: backup running and on power), or
• Battery auto-pause so a long job cannot flatten the laptop. See while charging.

Closed-lid backups on a MacBook should use closed-display mode so the panel is not lit inside the lid.

Check what is holding sleep

If the Mac will not sleep after a backup, open Preferences → Activity. You will see live power assertions for every app (the readable form of pmset -g assertions), plus Keepresso's decision log for why sessions started or stopped. More: Why won't my Mac sleep?.

Install

brew install --cask gyorgysh/keepresso/keepresso

Or download the DMG. First-run steps: getting started.

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