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Guided workflow variation

Three reasons to back off,and no others.

Unplugged. Battery Saver on. Lid closed with no display attached. Those are the only conditions that pause StayGreen — and each one resumes automatically when it clears.

StayGreen pauses when running on battery, when Battery Saver is on (even on wall power), or when the lid closes with no monitors attached. It resumes by itself, and desktops opt out automatically.

Pay once. Own it forever.

One-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install

Get it from Microsoft

Buy through the Microsoft Store—instant install, automatic updates, and a Microsoft receipt for easy expensing. No account needed on our site, and no subscription on Store purchases.

Full StayGreen overview
One-time purchase No telemetry Local-first

windows · local-first · one-time purchase · no telemetry

If this sounds like your week

A keep-awake tool with no guardrails is a battery bug.

A tool whose only job is "never sleep" will happily hold a laptop awake in your bag, on battery, at 4% charge. That is the tool working as designed, which is the problem. Preventing sleep is reasonable when plugged in at a desk and unreasonable in most other circumstances, and the tool has no way to tell the difference unless someone built one.

Where tooling usually breaks

Which is why the honest question is what it does when you are not looking.

The failure is never visible at the moment you enable it. It shows up as a hot laptop, a flat battery, or a machine that burned through a charge doing nothing. And a vague promise of "smart" power handling does not tell you which conditions are actually detected — which is the only thing that would let you predict the behaviour.

Where StayGreen lands

Named conditions you can predict, not adjectives.

StayGreen pauses on three specific signals. The AC line status going to battery pauses it. Windows Battery Saver switching on pauses it, including on wall power, because Battery Saver is an explicit instruction that the machine should be conserving. The lid closing with no active monitors pauses it. Each maps to a visible paused state with its reason shown, the tray icon changes colour, and each resumes automatically when the condition clears. Both battery signals sit behind one preference, on by default, so you can opt out if your workflow genuinely requires it.

Pay once. Own it forever.

One-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install

Get it from Microsoft

Buy through the Microsoft Store—instant install, automatic updates, and a Microsoft receipt for easy expensing. No account needed on our site, and no subscription on Store purchases.

Learn more about StayGreen

windows · local-first · one-time purchase · no telemetry

What you get

Feature highlights

No Polling, No Fake Input

Holds a documented Windows power request and reacts to system events, instead of a polling loop or simulated mouse movement.

Hardware Interlocks

Auto-pauses on battery, when Battery Saver is on, or when the lid closes with no external display attached — and resumes on its own.

Per-App Targeting

Keep awake only when specific apps like `ms-teams.exe` are active.

One-time purchase, perpetual license. Pay once, own it forever on the Microsoft Store.

One-time purchase, perpetual license. Pay once, own it forever on the Microsoft Store.

Engineering Proof

Event-driven · no polling loop

A power request, not a background loop.

StayGreen holds a Windows power request — created with PowerCreateRequest and set with PowerSetRequest — to ask Windows directly for the awake state. No fake mouse movement, no periodic wake pings, and no loop burning cycles to pretend the user is active.

It deliberately does not use the older SetThreadExecutionState flag, which is thread-affine: the flag belongs to the thread that set it. StayGreen changes its awake state from several threads — the command handler, the timed-session task, and the Win32 event worker — and a thread-affine flag produced inconsistent releases. The request API does not have that problem.

  • No polling loop: a foreground event hook, and one scheduled wake per timed session
  • No synthetic input events to trigger EDR or policy suspicion
  • No administrator rights, and no power plan or policy is modified

Task Manager, one machine, at idle

A single capture on one PC rather than a benchmark — we publish no averaged CPU or memory figure, because the app ships no measurement harness to produce one.

Windows Task Manager listing StayGreen at idle alongside other running applications

Product Interface

The StayGreen window showing the keep-awake switch, timed session presets, and per-app rule controls

A control panel built for intentional power-state overrides.

The StayGreen interface keeps the important decisions obvious: when to override sleep, how long to hold the state, and which app should trigger it. No command-line dance. No clutter disguised as enterprise UX.

Timed session: 15, 30, 60, or 120-minute presets, or a custom length, for meetings, uploads, renders, or overnight monitoring — so the hold releases itself instead of staying on indefinitely. Extend by 30 minutes or end it early.
Per-app rules: Name executables and StayGreen follows the foreground window, holding while one is in front and releasing when it is not — part of the workflow rather than a blanket machine-wide override.
Guardrails you can see: It pauses on battery, on Battery Saver, and when the lid closes with no display attached — each with its reason shown, and each resuming on its own.

Especially when

  • Keep a Windows machine awake without fake mouse movement or CPU-heavy polling loops
  • Prevent sleep during Teams, Slack, dashboards, uploads, meetings, or overnight monitoring
  • Work around aggressive Windows sleep policies with charger and lid guardrails

Who benefits

Real-world scenarios

The unplug you forgot about

You leave a keep-awake session running and pull the charger on your way to a meeting.

The AC change pauses the hold and the tray icon turns yellow with the reason. Plug back in and it resumes without being asked.

Battery Saver on wall power

Battery Saver is on because the charge is still low even though you have just plugged in.

StayGreen still pauses. Battery Saver being on is treated as an explicit instruction to conserve, independent of the AC state.

The desktop with no battery

You want none of this logic on a tower that has no battery and no lid.

When Windows reports no system battery, all three rules are disabled automatically. There is nothing to configure.

Deep dive

Exactly what is detected, and one thing that is not

Vague safety claims are unfalsifiable, so here is the full set of conditions and how each is read.

On battery. StayGreen queries the system power status and pauses when the AC line status reports running on battery. There is a subtlety worth mentioning: the app registers for the power-source change notification, but it treats that notification only as a prompt to re-read the authoritative system power status rather than trusting the payload it arrives with, because that payload proved unreliable in practice. The pause reason is recorded as on battery.

Battery Saver on. A separate notification reports Battery Saver state, and when it is on the hold pauses. This fires independently of the AC state — Battery Saver on while plugged in still pauses, because the user or the system has explicitly asked the machine to conserve, and overriding that would be presumptuous. There is a test covering exactly this case.

Lid closed with no monitors. The lid notification is cross-checked against the active monitor count, and only a closed lid with zero monitors pauses. Docked to an external display, the session continues.

The desktop guard. If Windows reports that the system has no battery, all three rules are disabled. Laptop safety logic on a desktop would only produce spurious pauses.

Unknown states never pause. If the AC state has not been determined, that is not treated as being on battery. Defaulting to a pause on missing information would make the app unpredictable on hardware that reports oddly.

A pause is not an off, and that distinction is the whole design. Pausing enters a separate state that remembers you asked to be awake. When the condition clears the hold resumes without intervention. Compare the alternative: a tool that switches off on the first pause leaves you with a machine that silently stopped an hour ago. The tray icon carries this — one colour for holding, another for paused, another for off — so the state is visible without opening the window.

And one thing that is explicitly not detected: temperature. StayGreen reads no thermal state and has no throttling logic. An earlier version displayed a "thermal" pause label for a cause it never actually detected; that was removed, and the app now carries regression tests asserting the interface never claims thermal pausing. If you read that claim about this app anywhere, it is wrong. The three conditions above are the complete list.

Trusted by pragmatic desktop users

Built for people who prefer tools that stay local.

Real workflows: focus timers that stay visible, batches that never leave the disk, and renames you can rewind.

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Our Core Moat

Engineered to respect your system boundaries.

Lightweight Native Stack

Compiled Rust core wrapped inside an optimized Tauri shell. No heavy background node loops or duplicate Chromium engines cooking your memory footprint (<25MB idle RAM).

100% Local-First Privacy

Executes entirely on-device with full offline isolation. Absolute zero background telemetry policies, no metrics aggregation, and zero mandatory cloud-sync accounts.

Perpetual Fallback Licenses

Pay a single, clear one-time purchase price. Own your specific native software utility execution tier permanently without artificial subscription paywalls or ongoing usage tax.

FAQ

Straight answers—no glossary dump

What exactly makes StayGreen pause?

Three conditions and no others: running on battery, Windows Battery Saver being on, or the lid closing with no active monitors attached. Each shows its reason and resumes on its own when it clears.

Does it pause for heat or thermal throttling?

No. It reads no temperature or throttling state at all. An earlier version showed a thermal pause label for a cause it never detected; that was removed and there are now tests asserting the UI never claims it.

Why pause for Battery Saver when I am plugged in?

Because Battery Saver being on is an explicit instruction that the machine should be conserving, whoever set it. Overriding that while plugged in would be presumptuous, so it pauses regardless of AC state.

Do I have to turn it back on after a pause?

No. A pause is a distinct state that remembers you asked to stay awake, so the hold resumes automatically when the condition clears. Only a session lock actually turns it off, and it tells you when that happens.

Can I disable the battery guardrails?

Yes. Both battery signals sit behind a single preference that is on by default. The lid rule and the desktop guard are structural rather than optional.

What does it need to run?

Windows 11, or Windows 10 version 1809 and later, plus the Microsoft Edge WebView2 runtime, which is already present on Windows 11 and updated Windows 10. It runs as a standard user, requests no administrator rights, and edits no power plan or registry power setting.

Is it private, and how do I get it?

StayGreen makes no network requests — there is no HTTP client in the build, no networking permission requested from Windows, and a content policy with no outbound destination. No telemetry, no account, nothing to opt out of. It needs no administrator rights and changes no power plan. It is a one-time purchase on the Microsoft Store; use the Microsoft Store button on this page for the current listing and price.

Related pages

Docked with the lid shut: awake. In a bag: asleep. Block sleep. Let the screen go dark anyway. Ask Windows to stay awake. Do not fake a mouse. Awake while you are in the app. Not the rest of the day.

No fake mouse input.
No busy-wait “keep awake” hacks.

StayGreen holds a documented Windows power request — no fake input, no polling loop — with interlocks that pause on battery, on Battery Saver, and when the lid closes with no display attached, plus per-app rules that follow the foreground window.

Pay once. Own it forever.

One-time purchase on the Microsoft Store · No subscription · Instant install

Get it from Microsoft

Buy through the Microsoft Store—instant install, automatic updates, and a Microsoft receipt for easy expensing. No account needed on our site, and no subscription on Store purchases.

Open full product page

Technical specifications

Technical specifications for procurement

Spec Implementation
Data Sovereignty Sleep-prevention state is local; no remote presence or activity reporting
Telemetry Status None
Core Runtime Native Windows binary using SetThreadExecutionState / execution-state APIs
Network Requirements Fully functional offline
Deployment Compatibility Windows 10 and 11 (x64); direct purchase and Microsoft Store
System footprint Near-zero idle CPU; no polling loops or fake input injection
Hardware guardrails Auto-pause on battery unplug or lid close