Aware

A macOS menu bar app that keeps your Mac awake by detecting your presence with the FaceTime camera.

How It Works

• Local & private — No networking, telemetry, third-party dependencies, or even temp-directory writes; captured frames are processed in memory and discarded immediately.
• Hardware-accelerated — Uses Vision on Apple Silicon; face detection runs on GPU or Apple Neural Engine, not CPU.
• Smart presence detection — Skips camera checks when you've used the keyboard or mouse in the last 30 seconds. Does not consume any power or resource during active use.
• Menu bar only — No Dock icon; runs quietly in the background.

Quick Start

Download: GitHub Releases — download Aware.zip, unzip, and drag Aware.app to Applications.

Build from source:

xcodebuild -scheme Aware -configuration Debug -derivedDataPath build build
open build/Build/Products/Debug/Aware.app

Or double-click Launch Aware.command to build and launch in one step.

Grant camera access when prompted, then click the person icon in the menu bar to enable.

Create a release: git tag vX.Y && git push origin vX.Y — GitHub Actions builds and attaches Aware.zip.

Requirements

• macOS 13+
• Camera access (requested on first launch)