Close My Lid

Close My Lid keeps a Mac awake while coding agents, builds, downloads, and other long-running work continue after the laptop lid is closed.

It ships as a native macOS menu bar app, a close-my-lid CLI for Linux and Windows, a Raycast extension, Homebrew formula/cask packages, and the marketing site.

The whole desktop side is one Rust workspace: a shared lidcore crate holds the session state machine, persistence, agent detection and the per-OS lid mechanism, and each platform's interface is a thin shell over it.

Install

Most users only need the menu bar app:

brew install --cask krishkalaria12/close-my-lid/close-my-lid

Install the CLI only if you want terminal/script access:

brew install krishkalaria12/close-my-lid/close-my-lid

If you installed Close My Lid before the dedicated Homebrew tap existed, replace the old custom tap clone once. Installed packages are preserved:

brew untap --force krishkalaria12/close-my-lid
brew tap krishkalaria12/close-my-lid

The cask installs Close My Lid.app into /Applications. The formula installs the close-my-lid command-line tool.

Every release carries an archive for each platform — the zipped .app for macOS, a tar.gz of the CLI for Linux, and a zip of the CLI and tray app for Windows:

• Close My Lid v0.5.0

Features

• Menu bar controls for 30 minute, 1 hour, 4 hour, and Unlimited sessions
• Admin-approved closed-lid sleep hold using pmset -a disablesleep
• One-time passwordless grant: a single admin prompt installs a tightly scoped sudoers allowlist so holds start, end, and restore without ever asking for your password again
• The ON/OFF toggle remembers the last duration you picked instead of always starting Unlimited
• Automatic cleanup when a timed session expires or the app quits, with an exact end-of-session timer
• Dead-man watchdog LaunchAgent that restores normal sleep if the app crashes while a hold is active
• Low-battery safety release that restores normal sleep at 5% when unplugged
• Notifications when a hold starts, is about to end, and has ended
• Launch at Login toggle
• Update checks in the panel, with a link to the release
• Battery Settings shortcut
• Live session counts for Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, OpenCode, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Pi in the menu panel
• Local session persistence and live pmset reconciliation
• Raycast commands for enable, disable, and status
• CLI commands for scripts and package managers

macOS App

Run the app from /Applications after installing the cask. The menu shows the current hold status, session presets, Launch at Login, Battery Settings, and Quit.

Closed-lid sleep prevention requires administrator approval. Close My Lid restores normal sleep behavior when a session stops, expires, or the app quits.

Notifications

Close My Lid posts a notification when a hold starts, when a timed session has about 5 minutes left, and when it ends. macOS asks for notification permission the first time the app launches; you can change it later in System Settings › Notifications. Indefinite holds only post the start notification since they have no scheduled end.

CLI

close-my-lid --help
close-my-lid status
close-my-lid enable
close-my-lid disable

Running close-my-lid with no arguments launches the menu bar app.

On Linux and Windows the CLI is a fuller tool — close-my-lid enable --for 2h, agents, JSON output, and a systemd user unit. See apps/desktop/README.md.

Raycast

The Raycast extension lives in packages/raycast and exposes:

• Start Holding Lid
• Stop Holding Lid
• Check Lid Hold Status

It uses the same pmset behavior as the native app and is restricted to macOS in the manifest.

Development

The project is organized as a small monorepo so the native app, Raycast extension, Homebrew packages, and future website can share one product direction.

apps/desktop/      Rust workspace: shared core, macOS menu bar app, CLI, Windows tray app
apps/web/          Astro + Tailwind marketing site
packages/raycast/  Raycast extension
Formula/           Legacy migration copy of the Homebrew CLI formula
Casks/             Legacy migration copy of the Homebrew app cask
docs/              Product and implementation notes
scripts/           Release and packaging helpers

The website is a pnpm workspace (pnpm-workspace.yaml); install it from the repository root. The Raycast extension is deliberately outside that workspace and uses npm, because ray lint validates that the extension directory holds its own package-lock.json:

pnpm install                        # the website
npm --prefix packages/raycast ci    # the Raycast extension

Root scripts proxy to the workspace packages:

pnpm dev             # run the website locally
pnpm build           # type-check and build the website
pnpm raycast:dev     # run the Raycast extension
pnpm raycast:lint    # lint and format-check the Raycast extension
pnpm macos:build     # build the menu bar app
pnpm macos:test      # run the shared-core and app tests
pnpm macos:package   # build the .app bundle into dist/macos

Build and test the Rust workspace:

cd apps/desktop
cargo test -p lidcore -p lid-macos -p lid-cli
cargo run -p lid-macos -- --help
cargo run -p lid-macos            # the menu bar app, unbundled
cargo run -p lid-cli -- agents

An unbundled build has no bundle identifier, so notifications, Launch at Login and the watchdog agent all stand down — everything else works. Package the app to exercise those.

Building needs only the Command Line Tools: the app talks to AppKit directly through objc2 and has no Swift or Metal in its toolchain.

Package the menu bar app:

./scripts/package-macos-app.sh
open "dist/macos/Close My Lid.app"

Run the Raycast extension:

pnpm --filter ./packages/raycast dev

Website

apps/web is the Astro site for closemylid.app, built with Tailwind CSS v4 through @tailwindcss/vite. The visual design is ported from SunkenInTime/which-ai, with-design-skill/fable-5.1 iteration 2.

pnpm --filter @close-my-lid/web dev
pnpm --filter @close-my-lid/web build
pnpm --filter @close-my-lid/web preview

Product copy, download links and the version shown on the page all come from apps/web/src/data/site.ts, and the agent marks in apps/web/public/agents/ are the same SVGs the menu panel renders (from apps/desktop/crates/lid-macos/src/assets/). Update both when cutting a release.

The hero shot is apps/web/src/assets/hero.png, optimized at build time by astro:assets. Replace that file to refresh the screenshot; the responsive webp variants are regenerated automatically.

Packaging

The canonical packages live in krishkalaria12/homebrew-close-my-lid. The copies in this repository remain temporarily for users migrating from the old custom tap remote.

Safety

Keeping a Mac awake in a bag can create heat and battery risk. Prefer timed sessions when possible so the machine returns to normal sleep behavior automatically. As a backstop, Close My Lid automatically releases the hold and restores normal sleep when the battery drops to 5% while unplugged. A charging Mac carries no battery risk, so holds are left alone while plugged in.