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Guided workflow variation

Block sleep. Let thescreen go dark anyway.

An overnight render does not need a lit monitor. StayGreen can hold the system awake while leaving display power alone — and end the session on a timer so you never find it still running next week.

Choose the system-only scope to block sleep while allowing the display to switch off, then arm a timed session so the hold releases by itself when the job should be finished.

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

The machine sleeps four hours into a six-hour job.

Renders, exports, backups, large transfers, and long builds all run unattended, and unattended is exactly when Windows decides nothing is happening. You come back to a job that stopped partway, and depending on what it was doing, partway can mean corrupt output rather than a resumable pause.

Where tooling usually breaks

So people keep the screen on all night to solve a sleep problem.

The usual keep-awake approach holds the display on too, which is unnecessary for an unattended job and leaves a bright monitor burning for hours. The other common approach — editing the power plan to never sleep — solves tonight and then quietly applies forever, because nobody remembers to change it back.

Where StayGreen lands

Request exactly the part you need, for exactly as long as you need it.

Windows treats "do not sleep" and "keep the display on" as two separate requests, and StayGreen lets you pick. The system-only scope blocks sleep and leaves display power entirely to your normal settings, which is what an unattended job actually wants. A timed session then bounds it: pick 15, 30, 60, or 120 minutes, or type a custom length, and StayGreen releases the hold when the timer expires. Extend by 30 minutes if the job runs long, or end it early.

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 overnight export

A video export will take about five hours and you want the machine awake without a monitor lit all night.

System-only scope blocks sleep while the display powers down normally. A timed session sized to the job releases the hold afterwards.

The backup that must not be interrupted

A large backup to an external drive, where a mid-transfer sleep is worse than a slow transfer.

The hold is held for the whole window you set, and because a timed session outranks the per-app rules, nothing else releases it early.

The forgotten toggle

You have been burned by keep-awake tools you left on for a week.

A timed session ends by itself. There is no "on until you remember" state unless you choose the untimed toggle deliberately.

Deep dive

Two requests, one timer, and why it does not poll

Windows exposes sleep prevention through power requests, and there are two relevant kinds. System-required tells Windows not to enter sleep. Display-required tells it to keep the panel powered. They are independent, and conflating them is why so many keep-awake tools leave a monitor on for jobs that do not need one.

StayGreen exposes this as a scope choice. The default takes both, which is right for presenting or reading. The system-only scope takes system-required alone, which is right for unattended work: the machine stays up, the display follows your normal timeout, and nothing is kept lit for nobody.

The acquisition order is deliberate and worth knowing if you care about correctness. System-required is taken before display-required and released after it, and if the display request fails to acquire, the system request is unwound rather than left dangling. There is no state in which the app believes it holds something it does not, or half-applies a hold and leaves it that way.

The timer does not tick. A timed session schedules a single wake at the deadline on a monotonic clock rather than polling a counter. When it fires, the hold is released and the state returns to off. That is one scheduled wake for the entire session, however long it is. The same design runs throughout: the per-app rule is driven by an event hook rather than a loop that asks what the foreground window is, and the power, lid, and session signals all arrive as notifications. This is the substantive efficiency claim, and it is a claim about architecture rather than a benchmark — there is no measurement harness in the app, and no CPU or memory figure here is being asserted as measured.

Bounds and precedence. Custom session lengths are whole minutes up to seven days, which is a deliberate ceiling rather than an unbounded field. An armed timed session outranks the per-app rules, so a rule that would otherwise release the hold cannot cut a job short. Hardware safety still applies on top of everything: if you unplug the machine and the battery rule is on, the session pauses, because an unattended job on battery is a different risk than one on wall power.

One honest limitation for unattended work. On hardware that uses Modern Standby, the system can take over on battery regardless of what any application requests. If the job matters, keep the machine on wall power. StayGreen probes for Modern Standby support and shows an advisory rather than letting you discover this at four in the morning.

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

Can I block sleep without keeping the screen on?

Yes. Windows treats sleep prevention and display power as separate requests, and StayGreen's system-only scope takes just the system one. The machine keeps running and your monitor powers down on its normal timeout.

How long can a session run?

Presets are 15, 30, 60, and 120 minutes, and you can type a custom length in whole minutes up to seven days. There is an "extend by 30 minutes" button and an end-session button, and the hold releases by itself when the timer expires.

Will a per-app rule cut my job short?

No. An armed timed session takes precedence over the foreground app rules, so a rule that would otherwise release the hold cannot end a running session early.

What if I unplug the laptop mid-job?

With the battery rule enabled, which is the default, the session pauses and the tray icon shows it. It resumes on its own when you plug back in — a pause is a distinct state, not an off.

Is it reliable for an overnight job on battery?

Keep it on wall power. On hardware using Modern Standby the system can take over on battery regardless of what an application requests, and no app can override that. StayGreen shows an advisory rather than letting you find out at 4am.

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. Three reasons to back off, and no others. Awake while you are in the app. Not the rest of the day. Ask Windows to stay awake. Do not fake a mouse.

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