I’ve been working with international teams for years now, which means I spend a fair amount of time in video calls across different time zones. There’s nothing more frustrating than being mid-presentation when your Mac decides it’s nap time and dims the display or, worse, goes to sleep entirely. I’d always dealt with this by manually adjusting system preferences before important calls, then forgetting to change them back afterward.
NeverNap solves this specific annoyance by sitting in your menu bar and giving you quick control over your Mac’s sleep behavior. Instead of diving into System Settings every time you need your screen to stay awake, you can choose from presets ranging from 5 minutes to indefinite. I find myself using the 1-hour preset most often during meetings, and the 4-hour option when I’m running backups or file transfers that I don’t want interrupted.
The app comes in two versions. There’s a free version that handles the basic sleep prevention, and NeverNap Pro (€2.99 on the Mac App Store) adds some genuinely useful features. The Pro version includes custom presets with user-defined durations, three prevention modes (full, display only, or system only), smart scheduling that lets you set presets until a specific time, and app integration that automatically activates when you launch particular applications. That last feature is particularly clever if you consistently need certain apps to keep your Mac awake.
I’ve been using the Pro version on my Mac Mini M4 for a few weeks, and the calendar integration stands out as the most practical addition. Once configured, it automatically prevents sleep during calendar events, then deactivates when they conclude. This removes the mental overhead of remembering to toggle sleep prevention before each video call. The app also includes battery protection settings for MacBooks, preventing activation when battery falls below a specified level.
Performance is negligible. The app uses roughly 50MB of memory and minimal CPU. It operates silently from the menu bar with a simple icon that shows your current preset status. You can customize the menu bar display to show the preset name, timer, or both.
NeverNap requires macOS 14 or newer (technically the App Store listing says “macOS 26 or newer” which appears to be a typo, likely meaning Sonoma or later). The app is developed by Lucas Raggers and weighs in at just 5.9 MB. It supports family sharing for up to six members, which is useful if you’re standardizing tools across multiple Macs in your household.
The app doesn’t try to do too much. It prevents sleep when you need it prevented, then gets out of the way. There’s no complicated interface or confusing options. The free version handles basic use cases perfectly well. The Pro version adds conveniences that become more valuable if you frequently need fine-grained control over when your Mac stays awake.
If you regularly give presentations, participate in video calls, or run long processes that system sleep would interrupt, NeverNap eliminates the friction of constantly adjusting system settings. It’s a small utility that solves a specific problem without introducing complexity.
