Cross-platform wakelock / keep-awake / stay-awake written in Python.

What is wakepy?

Wakepy is a package with an Python API and a CLI tool for keeping a system awake. It has two main modes:

⌛ Keeping CPU awake: For long running tasks. Inhibit the automatic, timer based sleep or suspend action, but allow screenlock and screensaver turning on and monitor turning off. E.g. for training machine learning models, video encoding and web scraping. (See: keep.running)

🖥️ Keeping screen awake: For long running tasks which require also the screen on and screenlock and screensaver inhibited. E.g. for showing a video and dashboard / monitoring apps. (See: keep.presenting)

Supported runtime environments

Wakepy may keep the following systems awake. ⌛: keep.running mode, 🖥️:keep.presenting mode.

Unix above refers to any Unix-like systems which might use such DEs, e.g. Linux or FreeBSD. See also: Wakepy roadmap.

Installing

Wakepy supports CPython 3.7 to 3.13 and PyPy 3.8 to 3.10, and may be installed from PyPI with

pip install wakepy

Wakepy can also be installed from conda-forge with

conda install wakepy

For more details and install options, see: Installing documentation.

[!NOTE] To get the wakepy CLI command working, you might need to restart the shell / terminal application.

Why wakepy?

Here's some reasons why you might want to consider using wakepy:

🙅🏼‍♂️ Non-disruptive methods ✅

No mouse wiggling or pressing random keys like F15. Wakepy is completely non-disruptive. It uses the APIs and programs the system provides for keeping a system awake.

🛡️ Safe to crash 💥

No changing of any system settings; killing the process abruptly will not leave the keepawake on, and will not require any manual clean-up.

🚨 For security reasons 🔒

With keep.running mode you can disable just the automatic suspend and keep the automatic screen lock untouched.

🌐 You need a cross-platform solution 🦸

Same code works on Windows, macOS and Linux on multiple different Desktop Environments.

💪 You want to have more control ⚙️

It is possible to whitelist or blacklist the used wakepy Methods. It is also possible to prioritize them and define a on-fail action in case activating a wakepy mode fails.

✂️ You want to keep the amount of dependencies low 📦

If you're running wakepy on Linux, jeepney (a dependecy free package) is required for D-Bus based methods. On Python 3.7, typing-extensions is needed for typing. Otherwise: wakepy has no python dependencies.

⚖️ Package needs to have a permissive licence ✔️

Wakepy is licenced under permissive MIT License.

Command line interface (CLI)

To keep system from sleeping, run

wakepy

For presentation mode, add -p flag. See also: CLI API.

Basic usage within Python

In the simplest case, keeping a system running long running task with wakepy would be in python (See: keep.running):

from wakepy import keep

with keep.running():
    # Do something that takes a long time. The system may start screensaver
    # / screenlock or blank the screen, but CPU will keep running.

If you want to also prevent screen lock and screen blank, use the keep.presenting mode:

from wakepy import keep

with keep.presenting():
    # Do something that takes a long time and requires the screen to be awake

[!TIP] See the User Guide and the available wakepy Modes and Methods

[!NOTE] Wakepy API is still experimental 🚧

Since wakepy is still 0.x.x, the API might change without further notice from one release to another. After that, breaking changes should occur only part of a major release (e.g. 1.x.x -> 2.0.0).

Where wakepy is used?

• aTrain — transcription of speech recordings utilizing machine learning models.
• mpc-autofill — Automating MakePlayingCards' online ordering system
• LiveboxMonitor — Graphical user interface for routers (French project)
• FOLON-FO4Downgrader — Tool for reverting to a previous version of a game (Fallout 4)
• BD_to_AVP — 3D Blu-ray to Apple Vision Pro converter
• davlee1972/upscale_video — Upscaling video using AI
• minarca — Cross-platform data backup software
• OceanOptics/Inlinino — Data logger for oceanography
• cogent3/EnsemblLite — Obtaining dumps of Ensembl MySQL databases
• lakeshore — Lake Shore instruments python Driver
• UCSD-E4E/baboon-tracking — In pipelines of a Computer Vision project tracking baboons
• pysimai — A Python wrapper for Ansys SimAI
• viskillz-blender — Generating assets of Mental Cutting Test exercises

Links

• 🖤 GitHub: github.com/fohrloop/wakepy
• 🐍 PyPI: pypi.org/project/wakepy
• 📖 Documentation: wakepy.readthedocs.io/stable
• 📝 Changelog: wakepy.readthedocs.io/stable/changelog.html

Wakepy roadmap

Wakepy vision is to support any^† environment which runs Python. The following runtime environments will get support in the future^†. Please vote or comment on the issue to raise them towards top of priorities. I'm also happy to receive PRs or comments explaining how it could be implemented.

^†: if technically possible.

If you have ideas or comments, please post yours on wakepy/#317.

Licenses

The contents of this repository are licensed with MIT License, which is permissive and allows you to use the code as part of any application or library, commercial or not, with the following exception: The GitHub Invertocat logo used in the social share image is property of GitHub, downloaded from github.com/logos and is used under the terms specified by GitHub.

Footnotes