dexy 💊

Keep your Macbook wide awake. For agentic workflows, on the go.

dexy is a one-word toggle for macOS's built-in "never sleep — even with the lid shut" mode.

Flip it on before you close the laptop, to keep your agents running, a download progressing, or whatever else that helps you remain productive always. Just add an internet connection via your hotspot, and you can keep your Macbook in action all day.

Functionally, this is just a cute little wrapper around pmset's SleepDisabled flag. But it's easier to type four characters than to remember the full pmset command every time.

$ dexy
● dexy: ON  — wide awake (battery sleep 0, lid-closed sleep disabled)

$ dexy status
● dexy: ON  — wide awake (battery sleep 0, lid-closed sleep disabled)

$ dexy off
○ dexy: OFF — normal sleep (battery sleep 5m, lid-closed enabled)

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew install jonobri/tap/dexy

From source

git clone https://github.com/jonobri/dexy
ln -s "$PWD/dexy/dexy" /usr/local/bin/dexy   # or anywhere on your PATH

Usage

dexy              toggle on/off
dexy on           stay awake — disable sleep, even with the lid shut
dexy off          restore normal sleep
dexy status       show the current state
dexy setup-sudo   allow passwordless toggling (one-time setup)
dexy remove-sudo  undo setup-sudo
dexy -h           help
dexy -v           version

Toggling sleep is a privileged operation, so on/off/toggle run pmset under sudo and may ask for your password. status never needs sudo.

Skip the password prompt

If you toggle often and don't want to type your password each time, run:

dexy setup-sudo

This installs a small sudoers drop-in at /etc/sudoers.d/dexy that lets dexy run only the exact pmset commands it needs — battery idle-sleep and the lid-closed sleep toggle — without a password. It validates the rule with visudo before installing it (a malformed sudoers file can lock you out of sudo), and asks for your password just that once, to write the file. The rule grants nothing beyond those pmset calls — no general pmset access, no other binaries:

<you> ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/pmset -b sleep [0-9]*, \
                           /usr/bin/pmset -b disablesleep 0, \
                           /usr/bin/pmset -b disablesleep 1

Undo it any time with dexy remove-sudo (or sudo rm /etc/sudoers.d/dexy). It's entirely optional — without it, dexy just falls back to prompting.

Tips

• Restoring sleep. dexy on remembers your battery idle-sleep timeout and dexy off puts that exact value back, so it never clobbers your setting (or leaves system sleep lower than display sleep, which makes pmset complain). To force a specific value instead, set:

  export DEXY_SLEEP_MINUTES=10

  The remembered value is the only thing dexy persists (in ~/.local/state/dexy/); on/off is always read back from the system flag.
• Scripting. dexy status prints a stable dexy: ON / dexy: OFF line you can grep. Set NO_COLOR=1 to strip ANSI colours.

How it works

macOS gates lid-closed sleep behind the SleepDisabled power-management flag. dexy on runs:

sudo pmset -b sleep 0          # don't idle-sleep on battery
sudo pmset -b disablesleep 1   # and don't sleep when the lid closes

dexy off reverses both. That's the whole trick—no daemon, no menu-bar app, nothing running in the background. When dexy is on, it's on because the system flag is set, and dexy status reads that same flag back, so the two can never drift out of sync.

Heads up: while dexy is on, your Mac will not sleep on battery with the lid shut. Great for a long unattended job; less great if you toss it in a bag and forget. dexy off (or a reboot) clears it.

Why "dexy"?

A little something to keep your Mac up past its bedtime. Use responsibly. ☕

License

MIT © Jonathan O'Brien