Keeping Your Work Laptop Awake
Sometimes you’d like to keep your work laptop from sleeping, and for whatever reason, you might not be able to change your system’s power management rules. In this article, I show you how to get around that.
Pre-existing Tools
Before you try this, note that there are other tools that you can use to do
this. caffeinate is one of them, and it should be pre-installed on your Mac
or Linux machine. I always recommend checking your power management to prevent
this, as well.
The keyboard Python module
Before you do this, you should do one of two things:
- Create a Python 3.6+ Virtual environment; or
- Create a Python 3.6+ Conda environment.
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python3 -m venv ~/.keyboardenv
~/.keyboardenv/bin/python -m pip install keyboard
Or:
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conda create -n keyboard python=3.6
conda activate keyboard
pip install keyboard
Now, create this script and save it in your home folder.
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import keyboard
keyboard.press_and_release("f14")
Save this as .keep_awake.py.
Now, in your ~/.profile file, add the following:
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# if you are using the virtualenv method:
alias keep_awake='watch -n 300 "$HOME/.keyboardenv/bin.python $HOME/.keep_awake.py"'
# if you're using the conda method:
alias keep_awake='watch -n 300 "$HOME/miniconda3/conda/envs/keyboard/bin/python $HOME/.keep_awake.py"'
Note that the location of the environment will depend on where you installed
Miniconda/Anaconda on your laptop. I usually install it into the $HOME
directory.
Now, ensure that your directory is sourced in your shell’s rc file.
Add source ~/.profile to the end of your .bashrc or .zshrc or the rc
file of your chosen shell.
Final Notes
The keyboard module can be used to do a lot of interesting things, such
as making shortcuts and adding hotkeys for altered behaviour. Do explore more
and @ me on Twitter if you build something amazing.