wakepy 0.5.0

Simple wakelock / keep-awake / stay-awake

   

⏰😴 wakepy

Simple cross-platform wakelock written in Python. Prevent your computer from going to sleep in the middle of a long running task.

Table of Contents

• Installing
• Usage
  • Start from command line
  • Set keepawake within a python script
• Details
• Changelog

Requirements

Wakepy currently supports

• Windows
• Linux (with systemd)
• macOS

Feel free to submit pull request(s) for other platforms.

Installing

pip install wakepy

Usage

Start from command line

python -m wakepy

Starts the program. While running, computer will not go to sleep. If battery is running out, your OS might force laptop to sleep.

CLI

python -m wakepy [-h] [-s]

optional arguments:    
  -h, --help               show this help message and exit
  -s, --keep-screen-awake  Keep also the screen awake. On Linux, this flag is set on and cannot be disabled.

Usage within a python script

Option 1: set_keepawake and unset_keepawake functions

from wakepy import set_keepawake, unset_keepawake

set_keepawake(keep_screen_awake=False)
# do stuff that takes long time
unset_keepawake()

Option 2: keepawake context manager

new in version 0.4.0

from wakepy import keepawake

with keepawake(keep_screen_awake=False):
  ... # do stuff that takes long time

Parameters

• keep_screen_awake can be used to keep also the screen awake. The default is False. On Linux, this is set to True and cannot be changed.

Details

Windows

The program simply calls the SetThreadExecutionState with the ES_SYSTEM_REQUIRED flag, when setting the keepawake, and removes flag when unsetting. The flag cannot prevent sleeping if

• User presses power button
• User selects Sleep from the Start menu.

Linux

The program uses the systemctl mask command to prevent all forms of sleep or hybernation when setting the keepawake, and unmasks the functions when unsetting keepawake. This command will remain active until keepawake is removed. The flag cannot prevent sleeping from user interaction. This action does require sudo privileges.

Darwin (macOS)

The program launches a caffeinate in a subprocess when setting keepawake, and terminates the subprocess when unsetting. This does not prevent the user from manually sleeping the system or terminating the caffeinate process.

Summary table

	Windows	Linux	Mac
wakepy uses	SetThreadExecutionState with the ES_SYSTEM_REQUIRED flag	systemctl mask	caffeinate
sudo / admin needed?	No	Yes	No
When process which called set_keepawake dies	All flags set by the process are removed	Nothing happens.	Nothing happens.
keep_screen_awake option	Optional Default: False	Always True	Optional Default: False
When keep_screen_awake = True	Screen is kept awake. Windows will not be locked automatically.	Screen is kept awake. Automatic locking = ?	Screen is kept awake. Automatic locking = ?
Multiprocessing support	Yes	No	No
When process calling set_keepawake dies	All flags set by the process are removed. See: How will killing while lock set affect it?
How to debug or see the changes done by wakepy in the OS?	Run powercfg -requests in elevated PowerShell	?	?
If on laptop, and battery low?	Sleep	?	?

⚖️ Pros and Cons

👑💯 Advantages of wakepy

• wakepy has zero (python) dependencies
• wakepy is simple and it has a little amount of code. You can read the whole source code quickly
• It has permissive MIT licence
• It is multiplatform
• You can use it directly from command line, or within your python scripts
• It runs without admin/sudo priviledges on Windows and Mac.

🔍❕ Disadvantages / pitfalls with wakepy

• On Linux, the current solution using systemctl needs sudo priviledges. PRs to circumvent this are welcome.
• Currently multiprocessing is not well supported on Mac and Linux (?); the first function calling unset_keepawake or releasing the keepawake context manager will allow the PC to sleep even if you have called set_keepawake multiple times. For these kind of cases, perhaps an implementation making mouse movement or pressing keyboard keys would work better.

Changelog

• See CHANGELOG.md