I hate sleeping. Actually, I’m a fiend for sleeping, but only the physical kind. When it comes to my computer sleeping, however, I can’t take it. Specifically, closing the lid. Allow me to explain.

When one closes a Mac’s lid, it automatically goes to sleep. For my particular use case, I prefer it to stay on, but not go to sleep. You may ask, why not simply keep the lid open? The answer is twofold.

One, I enjoy simply closing the lid; it gives me a sort of finality, closure, to whatever I’ve decided to temporarily put on hold. Those of you who require flip phones for the finality that flipping your mobile closed at the end of a call gives you can relate to this. Two, and more practically, I often work in public locations, and having the lid open and display on would be both inconvenient and potentially may give rise to privacy concerns, especially when working on client’s information/projects. I have been closing lids on PC laptops for years like this. Its a simple Control Panel setting, and I was good to go. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that no such setting exists on Macs!

So for the first couple days of using my Air, I was forced to put the computer to sleep, and subsequently entering my password upon opening the lid again. A real pain. And then salvation came. It came in the form of…InsomniaX.

InsomniaX is a tiny little app coded by Andrew James, a.k.a. semaja2, that sits in the background of your computer (or taskbar), and when activated, doesn’t let you computer sleep.

Even when you close the lid. Salvation!

There is a small caveat, however. It seems that there is a potential danger of your MacBook overheating, as the inner circuit boards usually air out through the keyboard, which would now be closed. According to this thread and this page, however, this issue is irrelevant in all aluminum Macs (they run in “clamshell mode”). So far, I haven’t noticed any issues, but will report back if anything develops.

But the best is yet to come…InsomniaX is absolutely FREE! Note that there is another program that accomplishes that same thing, but costs money. Its called Sleepless, and you can find it here.

BTW, I especially love the Insomnia guy- a cool icon in the form of an angry little blue face. Not sure why. Perhaps he relates to my inner demon. Is he blue too? Hmm…

Also, the author of this amazing little app has apparently fallen onto rough times, so if any of you happen to use this, I’m sure he’d appreciate a donation.

You can grab InsomniaX here.

FYI, there is another application called Caffeine that performs a different function- it’s purpose is to force your MacBook from falling asleep or from dimming the screen, as per your Energy Saver preferences. A quick writeup of the two can be found here.