Keep Your Mac Awake While Long Tasks Run: A Tiny Utility That Matters More Than It Looks

Some tools are not exciting. They are just useful in a way that quietly becomes hard to live without. Zara Zhang recently recommended a Mac utility called Amphetamine. Its job is simple: keep your Mac awake when the lid is closed, while a file is downloading, while an app is running, or during a long task. That sounds almost too small to write about. But I think it points to a very real shift in personal workflows: our laptops are starting to behave less like devices we actively sit in front of, and more like small personal servers. ...

May 26, 2026 · 7 min · cuigh