Amphetamine
Amphetamine is a macOS utility that keeps your Mac awake on demand or automatically during tasks such as downloads, media playback, and remote access.
What is Amphetamine?
Amphetamine is a macOS utility for preventing your Mac from sleeping when you need long-running tasks to continue. It helps users keep a Mac, and optionally its display, awake during downloads, presentations, remote sessions, streaming, file transfers, and other workflows that should not be interrupted by sleep. The app is designed around quick manual control as well as automation, so you can start a temporary keep-awake session or let rules activate it when certain apps, devices, networks, or power conditions are detected. Amphetamine also supports more advanced behavior such as trigger-based sessions and menu bar access for fast changes without opening a full window. It is best suited to people who want finer sleep-control options on macOS than the standard Energy Saver or Battery settings provide.
Key features
- Keep your Mac awake for a set time or until a chosen condition is met
- Prevent sleep automatically with trigger-based rules
- Start sessions when specific apps, power states, drives, or network conditions are detected
- Control sleep behavior quickly from the menu bar
- Optionally keep the display awake along with the system
- Support closed-display use on compatible Mac notebooks with the companion enhancer feature
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Safety overview
Status: Mostly safe
Amphetamine is a well-known Mac sleep-control utility, and its background behavior is consistent with its purpose because it must monitor session rules and change sleep behavior while active. It may request accessibility, automation, notification, or related permissions for advanced features such as triggers, scripting, or closed-display behavior. Review those permissions if you do not use the related features, and be careful with any copy obtained outside the Mac App Store because unofficial installers can expose you to tampered software.
Recommendation: Keep Amphetamine if you intentionally use it to stop your Mac from sleeping or to automate awake sessions for work, downloads, media, or remote access. If you no longer use those features, you can remove it without affecting macOS itself, but any custom sleep-control sessions and triggers will stop working.
Common paths
/Applications/Amphetamine.app
Preference paths
~/Library/Preferences/com.if.Amphetamine.plist
Container paths
~/Library/Containers/com.if.Amphetamine
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