Open Caffeine is a native macOS menu bar app for keeping your Mac awake for a chosen duration. Pick presets, set a custom timer, toggle screen sleep behavior, use a global hotkey, show a countdown in the menu bar, and stop automatically at a low battery threshold. It is open source, Apple Silicon native, and built for people who want a simple, modern Caffeine-style utility without extra marketing menu items.
Hey Product Hunt!
I built Open Caffeine because I wanted a simple, modern macOS menu bar app that keeps my Mac awake without extra clutter.
It lets you start a stay-awake session for a preset duration, set a custom timer, keep the display on or only prevent system sleep, toggle everything with a global hotkey, and see the remaining time right in the menu bar. There is also a low-battery threshold so it can stop automatically when you are on battery power.
The project is open source and Apple Silicon native. I’m launching it here to get feedback from macOS users, developers, and productivity folks: what would make this feel like the default lightweight utility you would install on a new Mac?
nice one. caffeinate -d under the hood i assume? curious what made the gui worth shipping over the cli.
How is this different from the original Caffeine or Amphetamine? Both are open source.I think calling this "Open" Caffeine is misleading.
The battery threshold auto-stop is a genuinely thoughtful detail that most wake-lock utilities skip entirely. We've had long-running local processes fail silently because the Mac went to sleep mid-run, so this addresses a real pain point cleanly. How do you assert the wake lock under the hood? Are you using IOPMAssertionCreateWithName or a different IOKit approach?
This is the kind of tiny Mac utility I like, but the install path is the part I’d check first.
Is the GitHub release meant to be used directly, or is Open Caffeine still mainly a local build from Xcode for now?
Auto stop at a low battery level is a great feature, I’ve killed my battery doing long downloads many times.
Open Caffeine launched on Product Hunt on June 1st, 2026 and earned 114 upvotes and 14 comments, placing #9 on the daily leaderboard. Open Caffeine is a native macOS menu bar app for keeping your Mac awake for a chosen duration. Pick presets, set a custom timer, toggle screen sleep behavior, use a global hotkey, show a countdown in the menu bar, and stop automatically at a low battery threshold. It is open source, Apple Silicon native, and built for people who want a simple, modern Caffeine-style utility without extra marketing menu items.
Open Caffeine was featured in Open Source (68.4k followers), Developer Tools (513.3k followers), GitHub (41.2k followers) and Menu Bar Apps (12.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 107k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Open Caffeine?
Open Caffeine was hunted by Hoon Choi. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Hoon Choi