A lightweight system tray app that prevents your PC from sleeping — like macOS caffeinate, but for Windows.
- single native exe
- no .NET, no runtime
- minimal footprint (~1.2 MB, <1 MB RAM)
There is no installer. Download caffeinate.exe from the Releases page, put it wherever you want, and run it. That's it.
No registry entries, no services, no dependencies, no setup wizard. One file — delete it when you're done.
Windows SmartScreen may warn on first launch — click "More info" → "Run anyway".
- Keep Awake — toggle to prevent sleep and display off indefinitely
- Timer — keep awake for 15 min / 30 min / 1 hour / 2 hours, or enter a custom duration (1–1440 min). Shows a notification when the timer expires.
- Black Out Screen — fills all monitors with a black screen. Any key or click dismisses it and locks the workstation.
- System tray — lives in your tray, left- or right-click to open the menu. Tooltip shows current state.
- Single instance — launching a second copy silently exits.
No admin rights required.
If you don't want to download a pre-built binary, build it yourself:
- Rust (stable)
- For cross-compilation from Linux/WSL:
- MinGW:
sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 - Windows target:
rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnu
- MinGW:
On Windows (native):
cargo build --release
Output: target/release/caffeinate.exe
On Linux / WSL (cross-compile):
cargo build --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu --release
Output: target/x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release/caffeinate.exe
Replace caffeinate.ico with your own .ico file (16×16 + 32×32, 32-bit RGBA) and rebuild. The icon is embedded at compile time.