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Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

Using a mouse jiggler, as I'm on meetings most of the day, and inactivity timeout is 5m, so that while looking at the screen it'll lock up and takes almost a minute to come back up (external connection to docked, closed macbook). Mac just sucks at recovering with an external display and the laptop closed.

Not "pretending" anything... just one pain over another.

edit: For clarity, it's a relatively locked down system, and even then, I'm generally connected to a remote Windows based VM for working "inside" a secured and more locked down environment. I can't use a software solution for this.

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On Windows you can open windows media player and play a silent track on repeat.

Or if you can code, it's a simple flag an application can set to tell the OS it can't fire a screen saver (that flag the player uses).

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winbase/...

Or, the ultimate zero-software solution ... just rest your mouse on top of a running analog wristwatch; bonus points if said watch is mechanical ::grin::

This is a great solution for my wristmouse but what about my deskmouse?

A deskwatch?

Maybe this might help? https://www.caffeine-app.net

I haven't used Caffeine but used the very similar app Amphetamine and found it worked great.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amphetamine/id937984704?mt=12

macOS has `caffeinate` built in as well.

https://ss64.com/mac/caffeinate.html

This will not show you as active. Teams and Slack and check the presence of HID events. If you have Xcode/swift installed you can script this instead:

    #!/usr/bin/swift
    import Foundation
    import AppKit

    let source = CGEventSource(stateID: CGEventSourceStateID.hidSystemState)
    CGEvent(keyboardEventSource: source, virtualKey:  0x37, keyDown: true)?.post(tap: .cghidEventTap)
    CGEvent(keyboardEventSource: source, virtualKey:  0x37, keyDown: false)?.post(tap: .cghidEventTap)

This simulates one press/depress of the command key (0x37). The rest of the key codes can be found in Events.h in the location of your MacOS SDK library (deep in Xcode usually).

Add it to a cron job or whatever.

But that isn't the goal. Keeping the computer from going to lock screen is.

This will also do that. It has the same effect as tapping a key repeatedly

I have a corner of my screen as the dedicated "do not turn on the screensaver" corner, and the rest as dedicated "screensaver NOW" corners. OS X supports this natively.

Really? I've had mine connected to 2 external monitors for years and it's always closed. I never have a problem getting it to wake back up. You can change the inactivity timeout settings under preferences. Should be under Displays or Power settings I think.

The settings in question are locked down, and I don't have the ability to change them... I've had similar experiences with prior macs. In any case the hardware jiggler works. I shut it off when I am away/done... mostly just a "keep alive" method without having to install software.

It could be the display device through the thunderbolt dock I'm using...

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