NoSleep: A Lightweight macOS Menu Bar App with SwiftUI

Have you ever been mid-presentation, watching a long build compile, or waiting for a large file to download — only for your Mac to decide it's nap time? macOS ships a built-in tool for exactly this: caffeinate. But running it from the terminal every time is clunky.

So I built NoSleep — a tiny macOS menu bar utility that wraps caffeinate in a one-click toggle. No Dock icon. No main window. Just a cup icon in your menu bar.

Features

• 
  One-click toggle — start/stop caffeinate from the menu bar


• 
  Duration presets — 15 min, 30 min, 1 hr, 2 hr, 4 hr, 8 hr, 10 hr, or Indefinite


• 
  Live countdown — shows remaining time while active (e.g. 2h 34m)


• 
  Start at Login — optional LaunchAgent so it auto-starts on boot


• 
  Prevents display + idle sleep — uses caffeinate -d -i
  

The Stack

• 
  Swift 6.0 with strict concurrency


• 
  SwiftUI + MenuBarExtra (macOS 13+)


• 
  Swift Package Manager — no Xcode project file required


• Minimum target: macOS 14 (Sonoma)
  

App Entry Point: MenuBarExtra

The entire app lives in the menu bar, which SwiftUI makes surprisingly clean with MenuBarExtra:

@main

struct NoSleepApp: App {

    @StateObject private var caffeinateManager = CaffeinateManager()

    @StateObject private var loginManager = LoginItemManager()



    var body: some Scene {

        MenuBarExtra {

            MenuBarView(manager: caffeinateManager, loginManager: loginManager)

        } label: {

            Image(systemName: caffeinateManager.isActive

                  ? "cup.and.saucer.fill"

                  : "cup.and.saucer")

        }

    }

}

That's the whole entry point. MenuBarExtra handles all the menu bar plumbing — no NSStatusItem, no AppKit boilerplate. The icon toggles between a filled and outlined cup based on whether caffeinate is running.

Setting LSUIElement: true in Info.plist hides the Dock icon and removes the main window entirely.

Core Logic: CaffeinateManager

The heart of the app is CaffeinateManager — an @MainActor ObservableObject that manages the caffeinate child process and a countdown timer.

Spawning the Process

func start() {

    stop()



    let proc = Process()

    proc.executableURL = URL(fileURLWithPath: "/usr/bin/caffeinate")



    var args = ["-d", "-i"]

    if selectedDuration != .indefinite {

        args += ["-t", "\(selectedDuration.rawValue)"]

        remainingSeconds = selectedDuration.rawValue

    }

    proc.arguments = args



    proc.terminationHandler = { [weak self] _ in

        Task { @MainActor [weak self] in

            self?.handleTermination()

        }

    }



    try? proc.run()

    process = proc

    isActive = true



    if selectedDuration != .indefinite {

        timer = Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval: 1, repeats: true) { [weak self] _ in

            Task { @MainActor [weak self] in

                self?.tick()

            }

        }

    }

}

A few things worth noting:

-d -i flags — -d prevents the display from sleeping, -i prevents idle sleep. Together they cover the common use cases.

-t <seconds> — when a duration is selected, caffeinate self-terminates after that many seconds. The app also runs a Timer in parallel to track remaining time for the UI.

terminationHandler — if caffeinate exits on its own (duration expired, or the system killed it), this handler fires and cleans up app state. The Task { @MainActor in ... } pattern bridges from the background callback thread into the main actor, which Swift 6 strict concurrency requires.

Duration Options

Durations are a typed enum with raw values in seconds:

enum SleepDuration: Int, CaseIterable, Identifiable, Sendable {

    case fifteenMin = 900

    case thirtyMin  = 1800

    case oneHour    = 3600

    case twoHours   = 7200

    case fourHours  = 14400

    case eightHours = 28800

    case tenHours   = 36000

    case indefinite = 0

}

The selected duration is persisted in UserDefaults so the preference survives app restarts.

Login Item: LaunchAgent Plist

Rather than using SMAppService (which requires a sandboxed app), NoSleep writes a LaunchAgent plist directly to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

    <key>Label</key>

    <string>com.nosleep.app</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>

    <array>

        <string>/Users/you/Applications/NoSleep.app/Contents/MacOS/NoSleep</string>

    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>

    <true/>

</dict>

</plist>

This approach works without sandboxing and gives full control over the plist.

Build & Install

The project uses Swift Package Manager — no .xcodeproj needed.

# Build (compiles, bundles, ad-hoc code signs)

./build.sh



# Run

open NoSleep.app



# Install to ~/Applications (optional)

./install.sh

Requirements: Swift 6.0+, Xcode Command Line Tools, macOS 14+.

Source Code

NoSleep is open source under the GPLv3.

GitHub: github.com/sergio-farfan/nosleep

Contributions, issues, and stars are all welcome. If you run into any macOS quirks with caffeinate or MenuBarExtra, feel free to open an issue.

Built with Swift 6 and SwiftUI on macOS Sonoma.