An Amphetamine alternative for Mac
Amphetamine is a genuinely good keep-awake app, and for plenty of people it is all they need. If you are looking for an Amphetamine alternative for Mac because your runs last hours and you want battery auto-sleep and thermal watch on top, here is an honest comparison.
What Amphetamine does well
Amphetamine is well-built, free, and popular for good reason. It holds the Mac awake reliably, gives you flexible triggers, and stays out of your way. None of that is in question here.
For everyday keep-awake, keeping the screen on during a presentation, stopping sleep while a download finishes, running a quick task to completion, it is an excellent choice and hard to beat.
So this is not a takedown. It is about a narrower question: what happens during a multi-hour unattended run when nobody is watching the battery or the heat.
Where long dev and AI runs ask for more
A keep-awake app, by design, keeps the Mac awake. It does not, on its own, watch the battery so the Mac sleeps before it drains flat, and it does not watch thermal state so a hot job does not run unsupervised.
For a long compile, a local model, or an agent run that lasts hours, those two gaps are exactly the ones that bite. LidRun's angle is to keep the work running safely rather than just keeping the Mac awake.
It detects dev and AI tools, holds the Mac awake while they work, and gates every session on battery and thermal state. When a threshold trips, it lets the Mac sleep instead of pushing the hardware through.
Which one to choose
If your need is general keep-awake and you like a free, flexible tool, Amphetamine is a great pick and you may not need anything more.
If your runs are long, heavy, and often unattended, and especially if you want to close the lid and walk away, the battery floor, thermal watch, and workload detection in LidRun are the things worth paying for.
They are not mutually exclusive either. If you already use Amphetamine for quick tasks, it is reasonable to try LidRun for the long dev and AI runs where safety thresholds matter most.
A safety-first workflow
Set a battery warning and an auto-sleep level, pick a session timer, then start your task and close the lid. LidRun keeps the work alive while conditions stay within your limits.
Leave thermal watch on so a hot run can wind down on its own, and stay plugged in for the longest jobs.
The result is the same close-the-lid-and-walk-away feeling, with a battery floor and thermal limit standing behind it.
LidRun keeps your work running with the lid closed, with battery and thermal safety built in.
Frequently asked
It covers the same keep-awake need and adds battery auto-sleep, thermal watch, and lid-closed support aimed at long dev and AI runs. Which fits depends on how long and how heavy your work is.
Not at all. It is an excellent, well-loved keep-awake tool. LidRun simply targets a different problem: keeping heavy, unattended runs alive within battery and thermal limits.
Auto sleep protection at a battery threshold you set, continuous thermal watch, automatic detection of dev tools, and a session timer that caps a run.
Yes, with keep-running mode on. Battery and thermal thresholds decide when a lid-closed session should end.