Recipe

Keep your Mac awake until a download finishes

Kilobat keeps the Mac awake while transfers run. When the traffic stays low for some minutes, it lets the Mac sleep again.

Free in the app and the CLIChecked: 29 October 2026

In the app

Click the Kilobat item in the menu bar.
Click the teacup at the top of the popover.
Choose Until Downloads Finish. You can also choose For 1 Hour or Until I Turn It Off.
To follow one app, right-click its row in the app list and choose Keep Mac Awake Until It Finishes.
To stop early, open the teacup menu and choose Turn Off.

With the CLI

Stay awake until the traffic of the Mac stays below 16 KB/s for 3 minutes.
```
kilobat awake --until-quiet
```
Follow one app only, with its id from kilobat status --json.
```
kilobat awake --until-quiet --app com.apple.Safari
```
Stay awake for a fixed time.
```
kilobat awake --for 2h
```
Stay awake while one command runs. Kilobat then reports the data that the command moved.
```
kilobat awake -- curl -O https://example.com/big.iso
```

Through MCP

Connect the MCP server once with claude mcp add kilobat -- kilobat mcp. For other clients, see the docs. Then an agent can call these tools. Tools that change settings tell the agent to ask you first.

Tool and arguments	What it does
`keep_awake` `{"minutes": 120, "reason": "Downloading the model"}`	Stops idle sleep for that time. It changes no settings.
`release_awake`	Ends the hold early.
`list_sessions` `{"days": 1}`	Awake sessions with the data used and the network changes.

Good to know

Closing the lid still puts the Mac to sleep. See Keep an agent running with the lid closed.
Each awake session goes into History with the data moved and the battery used.
The built-in caffeinate command also stops sleep. See Keep a Mac awake from Terminal with caffeinate.

Sources

Sources checked on 29 October 2026. Man pages are the ones installed with macOS; open one with man <name> in Terminal.