How to programmatically prevent a Mac from going to sleep?

Is there way to prevent a Mac from going to sleep programmatically using Objective-C? The I/O kit fundamentals section on Apple's dev site tells me that a driver gets notified of an idle / system sleep, but I can't find a way of preventing the system from sleeping. Is it even possible?

I've come across some other solutions using Caffeine, jiggler, sleepless and even AppleScript, but I want to do this in Objective-C. Thanks.

Solution 1:

Here is the official Apple documentation (including code snippet):
Technical Q&A QA1340 - How to I prevent sleep?

Quote: Preventing sleep using I/O Kit in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard:

#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>

// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep

// reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs 
// to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example, 
// "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.

// NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters. 
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");

IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep, 
                                    kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID); 
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{
    //  Add the work you need to do without 
    //  the system sleeping here.

    success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
    //  The system will be able to sleep again. 
}

For older OSX version, check the following:
Technical Q&A QA1160 - How can I prevent system sleep while my application is running?

Quote: Example usage of UpdateSystemActivity (the canonical way for < 10.6)

#include <CoreServices/CoreServices.h>

void
MyTimerCallback(CFRunLoopTimerRef timer, void *info)
{
    UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);
}


int
main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
    CFRunLoopTimerRef timer;
    CFRunLoopTimerContext context = { 0, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL };

    timer = CFRunLoopTimerCreate(NULL, CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent(), 30, 0, 0, MyTimerCallback, &context);
    if (timer != NULL) {
        CFRunLoopAddTimer(CFRunLoopGetCurrent(), timer, kCFRunLoopCommonModes);
    }

    /* Start the run loop to receive timer callbacks. You don't need to
    call this if you already have a Carbon or Cocoa EventLoop running. */
    CFRunLoopRun();

    CFRunLoopTimerInvalidate(timer);
    CFRelease(timer);

    return (0);
}

Solution 2:

Apple's Q&A1340 replaces Q&A1160. The latest Q&A answers the question "Q: How can my application get notified when the computer is going to sleep or waking from sleep? How do I prevent sleep?"

Listing 2 of Q&A1340:

#import <IOKit/pwr_mgt/IOPMLib.h>

// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep prevents display sleep,
// kIOPMAssertionTypeNoIdleSleep prevents idle sleep

//reasonForActivity is a descriptive string used by the system whenever it needs 
//  to tell the user why the system is not sleeping. For example, 
//  "Mail Compacting Mailboxes" would be a useful string.

//  NOTE: IOPMAssertionCreateWithName limits the string to 128 characters. 
CFStringRef* reasonForActivity= CFSTR("Describe Activity Type");

IOPMAssertionID assertionID;
IOReturn success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName(kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep, 
                                    kIOPMAssertionLevelOn, reasonForActivity, &assertionID); 
if (success == kIOReturnSuccess)
{

    //Add the work you need to do without 
    //  the system sleeping here.

    success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID);
    //The system will be able to sleep again. 
}

Note that you can only stop idle time sleep, not sleep triggered by the user.

For applications supporting Mac OS X 10.6 and later, use the new IOPMAssertion family of functions. These functions allow other applications and utilities to see your application's desire not to sleep; this is critical to working seamlessly with third party power management software.

Solution 3:

Just create an NSTimer that fires a function with this

UpdateSystemActivity(OverallAct);

I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what Caffeine does.