Keep the host awake

A MacBook that goes to sleep takes your agents with it. Nothing crashes — the sessions are still there when it wakes — but nothing progresses either, and your phone shows a host that stopped answering.

Offsite can hold the host awake for a bounded stretch of time.

Using it

The host toolbar has a power control:

• Disable host sleep — pick how long. The button then reads Host sleep disabled for as long as it is active.
• Allow host sleep — hand control back immediately.

Durations are fixed and always finite:

15 min	30 min	1 h	3 h	6 h	12 h

There is no “forever”. A window that always expires is the point: forget about it and the Mac goes back to normal power behaviour on its own, instead of quietly staying awake in a bag.

The one-time install

Changing the system sleep setting needs root, so the first use installs a small privileged helper and asks for your administrator password once. After that, switching sleep on and off needs no further prompts.

If you would rather not install it, Install power helper is the only thing that stops working — the rest of Offsite is untouched.

Closing the lid

Disabling sleep keeps the machine running with the lid closed on power. On battery, macOS still has the last word. If a MacBook is your permanent host, leave it plugged in.

Linux hosts

Not applicable — a Linux host stays up. The control does not appear.

Details

• Implementation: pmset SleepDisabled, set through a LaunchDaemon-installed privileged helper (com.rapidrocket.offsite.power-helper) over a local socket. The app never runs sudo pmset itself.
• Allowed durations in seconds: 900, 1800, 3600, 10800, 21600, 43200.
• The current state is read back from pmset -g, so a value changed outside Offsite is reflected rather than overwritten.
• This is about the host’s sleep, not your client’s. Your Mac or iPhone can sleep freely — sessions are host-owned.
• Related but different: Always reachable covers the machine coming back after a restart, not staying awake now.