Non DE-dependent caffeine alternatives

Any non-DE dependent apps other than caffeine for keeping your machine from going to sleep, like when you’re watching a movie. I’ve been using caffeine-ng from the AUR but it’s been buggy and now the most recent update is giving me some trouble. Thanks.

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Well, it is such a simple application, you can make it yourself. Just write a script that does the same thing.

Make a file with the following content and name it something descriptive, like aaaaaaaa:

#!/bin/sh
while true; do
  sleep 60s
  xdotool key a
done

Make it executable by running:

chmod u+x aaaaaaaa

And run it:

./aaaaaaaa

You need to have xdotool installed, of course.

This will simulate a keypress every 60 seconds (if you leave a text editor open, it will type aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, hence the name), effectively preventing your computer from going to sleep. You can choose whatever key will be the least obtrusive, I suggest F12 or something like that.

To exit it, just send SIGINT to it, by pressing Ctrl+C.

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