If that's the case, then the free and easy-to-use Caffeine app is the way to go.

On the flip side, there are a lot of options and a lot of use scenarios which can potentially conflict and overwhelm you, especially if you've never used Terminal before. A few common usage scenarios were outlined above, but these can be wielded in many different and interesting ways depending on your needs. If you have used the command line before, then you know that you can link up the different flags and arguments in various ways to create something custom and possibly powerful. caffeinate -d /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin īenefits & Limitations of the Caffeinate Command.

For example, if you're planning on some Netflix and chill, you can combine the pieces into the following to ensure that your Mac stays up. Naturally, all these choices can be piled on for interesting scenarios.

-s will prevent the machine from going to sleep when plugged in.

-m will prevent the disk from going to sleep.

-i will prevent the system from idle sleeping.

-d will prevent the display from going to sleep.

Per the manual pages for the Caffeinate command, there's a couple other more specific options that you can attach. The first part is just the caffeinate command and the second part, for this specific scenario, is just the location of the core Final Cut Pro program. Just search for and open Terminal from Spotlight Search, from your Launchpad, or via the Utilities folder in Applications. Like other operations, Caffeinate is run via Terminal. Some of the more common options are adding a sleep timer, targeting a specific program/process, and modifying the sleep options. The command can be run by itself along with some modification options that will customize its behavior. As the name suggests, running the command will 'caffeinate' your Mac and prevent it from going to sleep.

The aptly named Caffeinate is a command line utility that is accessed via Terminal. More recent versions of OS X introduced some changes to the way the system handles going to sleep alongside a handy built-in utility to induce insomnia. A classic option is to use the free program Caffeine. Naturally, there are various solutions available for this dilemma.

To resolve this, you can go to System Preferences and mess with the settings, but this can be an annoying process if you need to do it often. Yet in certain scenarios, you might not want your Mac to go to sleep: downloading a huge file, reading a book, reviewing a spreadsheet, analyzing some content on the screen. Macs are generally highly power efficient due to, in part, the optimized sleeping schedule with OS X.

Terminal mac sleep timer