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Features

Everything Don't Lock My PC does, and exactly how it does it.

Keep-awake engine

Two complementary mechanisms run together, because neither is sufficient alone:

Platform Prevent sleep / display off Reset lock / inactivity timer
Windows SetThreadExecutionState (ES_CONTINUOUS \| ES_SYSTEM_REQUIRED \| ES_DISPLAY_REQUIRED) SendInput mouse ±1px + invisible F15 keypress
macOS built-in caffeinate -dimsu subprocess Quartz CGEvent mouse ±1px + invisible F15 keypress

Why F15? It's a key virtually no application binds, so pressing it has no visible side effect — unlike Shift (can affect typing) or Ctrl (can trigger shortcuts). Some enterprise policies ignore mouse movement when deciding whether a user is idle, so the keypress is the reliable half.

Why the ±1px mouse move? It returns the cursor to its exact starting position, so it's imperceptible while still counting as user activity.

The loop runs on a daemon thread, so it never blocks the UI or prevents the app from exiting.

Cross-platform by design

The UI is completely platform-agnostic. All OS-specific logic lives behind a small abstraction, KeepAwakeBackend, selected automatically at runtime:

from dontlockpc.backends import get_backend

backend = get_backend()   # WindowsBackend or MacOSBackend
print(backend.name)       # "windows" / "macos"

Adding Linux support means writing one new backend class — no UI changes. See Architecture and Python API.

Stay awake with the lid closed

The keep-awake APIs above do not stop a lid-close sleep — that's a separate power-plan setting.

When enabled, the app:

  1. Reads the current lid-close action for both AC and DC power via powercfg /query.
  2. Sets both to Do nothing while keep-alive runs.
  3. Restores your original values on STOP or exit.

Non-destructive

Your original setting is saved before any change and restored automatically — including when you close the app.

Not available on macOS, where clamshell sleep is enforced by firmware.

Scheduled power action

Optionally power the machine down once a timer elapses.

Action Windows implementation macOS implementation
Sleep SetSuspendState(0, 1, 0) pmset sleepnow
Hibernate shutdown /h (falls back to SetSuspendState(1, 1, 0)) ➖ not supported
Shutdown shutdown /s /t 0 osascript → System Events → shut down

Timer accepts either minutes (90) or a 24-hour clock time (23:30, next occurrence). Safety behaviour:

  • Armed only while keep-awake is running — STOP disarms it.
  • A 30-second cancelable warning fires first.
  • Keep-awake is released before the action, so the OS can actually power down (and the lid-close override is restored).
  • Invalid input simply disarms the timer rather than guessing.

Windows hibernate

shutdown /h is used because SetSuspendState can silently fall back to sleep on some machines. Check hibernation is available with powercfg /a — see the FAQ.

Start at login

Platform Mechanism
Windows HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run registry value
macOS LaunchAgent .plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/

Both are per-user — no administrator rights required. If the OS rejects the change, the checkbox reverts so it always reflects the real state.

System tray

On Windows the app minimizes to the system tray with a right-click menu: Show · Start · Stop · Exit.

The tray wrapper degrades gracefully — if pystray is unavailable or the platform can't support it (macOS, where it would need the main thread), the app falls back to a normal minimize instead of crashing.

Live status dashboard

  • Pulse animation — an at-a-glance ACTIVE/INACTIVE indicator
  • Signal counter — how many keep-alive nudges have been sent
  • Last signal time — timestamp of the most recent nudge

Useful for confirming it's genuinely running before you walk away.

Catppuccin Mocha UI

A clean, modern dark Tkinter interface using the Catppuccin Mocha palette — the same colours this documentation site uses.

Proper Python packaging

  • pip install . → dontlockpc console command and dontlockpc-gui GUI script
  • python -m dontlockpc module entry point
  • src-layout package, typed, linted with ruff, tested with pytest
  • Standalone binaries via PyInstaller — see Build

Next: FAQ & troubleshooting