Amphetamine Enhancer
A helper that gives Amphetamine a closed-display fail-safe and visibility of all running processes.
What it does
Amphetamine is distributed through the App Store, so it is sandboxed and cannot see the full process list or act as a watchdog on itself. Amphetamine Enhancer is not sandboxed and fills those two gaps:
- Closed-display mode fail-safe — periodically checks whether Amphetamine is running and whether a session is active, so a Mac reverts to sleeping with the lid closed if something went wrong.
- All running processes — installs a script that periodically writes a list of every running app and process to a file Amphetamine can read, so Triggers and app-based sessions can react to processes the sandbox hides.
Notes
- Free and open source, from the same community around Amphetamine, but a separate developer to Amphetamine itself.
- Not in Homebrew — download from GitHub Releases.
- Only worth installing if you actually use closed-display mode or process-based Triggers. Otherwise Amphetamine alone is enough.
Alternative to
| Alternative | Type | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
KeepingYouAwake or caffeinate | Open source / Built in | Not sandboxed to begin with, so they need no companion |
| Nothing else | — | It exists specifically to extend Amphetamine, and only makes sense alongside it |