ContextCleaner: see every entry in the Windows 11 right-click menu, and which app added it — on the Microsoft Store.

Last updated:

Guided workflow variation

Short answer: no,and here is why.

Preventing sleep and looking active are separate mechanisms. A power request stops the machine sleeping without generating any input, so the idle timer presence indicators read keeps counting.

No. A Windows power request generates no input events, so it does not reset the idle timer that presence indicators read. Preventing sleep and appearing active are different problems.

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

Two problems get sold as one.

People reach for keep-awake tools for two different reasons: a machine that sleeps during long work, and a status icon that goes amber while they are reading, thinking, or on a call in another application. These feel like the same complaint — "my computer thinks I am gone" — and they are not the same mechanism at all.

Where tooling usually breaks

So the wrong tool gets bought, then blamed.

A keep-awake app solves the sleep problem cleanly and does nothing for the status problem, because the two are unrelated in the operating system. Plenty of tools are vague about this, and the result is a purchase that does not do the thing someone actually wanted, followed by a review explaining as much.

Where StayGreen lands

Know which one you have before you buy anything.

Windows tracks idle time from input events — keyboard and mouse activity. Presence indicators in collaboration apps read that idle time and change your status when it exceeds a threshold. A power request is a completely separate mechanism: it tells the power manager not to sleep, and generates no input, so the idle counter keeps rising. StayGreen is a keep-awake tool. It will hold your machine and display on reliably. It does not, by that mechanism, make you look present.

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 actual sleep problem

Your machine sleeps or the display dims during long renders, reads, or presentations.

This is what a power request is for, and StayGreen handles it — including a display-only-off scope for unattended jobs and guardrails on battery.

The status problem

You want a chat status to stay green while you read for an hour without touching the keyboard.

A power request will not do that. StayGreen has an optional, consent-gated presence mode that sends a slow key signal, and the app states plainly that such input is detectable.

The managed machine

You are on a work device where faking activity may be against policy.

Then the keep-awake behaviour is the part you want, and it uses no synthetic input at all. Presence mode stays off unless you deliberately consent to it.

Deep dive

Why these are separate mechanisms, and what the honest options are

The distinction comes down to what each mechanism talks to.

Sleep is managed by the Windows power manager. An application can hold a power request telling it that the system or the display must remain available. The power manager honours it and the machine stays up. No input is involved anywhere in that exchange.

Idle time is tracked separately, from input events. Windows records when input last arrived, and any application can ask how long ago that was. Collaboration apps use it to decide when you have stepped away. Because a power request produces no input events, that timer keeps counting up while a request is held — which is correct behaviour, not a bug. You genuinely have not touched the machine. The operating system is reporting the truth.

So a keep-awake tool and a presence tool are solving different problems, and no amount of holding power requests will affect a status indicator. Anything claiming a power request keeps you "available" is either mistaken or describing synthetic input without saying so.

What actually resets the idle timer is injected input. That is what mouse jigglers do, and it works. It is also flagged: Windows marks injected input at the OS level and any monitoring tool can read that flag, so it is not stealthy regardless of how gentle the input is.

StayGreen's position on this is deliberately awkward, and stated rather than hidden. It includes an optional presence mode that sends a single innocuous key signal on a slow interval. It is off by default. It cannot be turned on without an explicit consent step, and that consent is re-validated whenever settings are loaded or saved, so it cannot be enabled by hand-editing a configuration file. It only emits while a power request is actually held, never while the session is locked, and only within optional active hours you set. The interface says outright that the input is detectable by monitoring software, shows an advisory while it is active, and offers a "turn off and forget my consent" action. That posture exists because the feature has real policy implications and a tool that buried it would be setting people up.

Practical guidance. If your problem is sleep, you need the keep-awake behaviour, and it involves no synthetic input at all. If your problem is a status icon, understand that any solution to it works by faking activity, that this is detectable, and that your workplace may have a view on it. Those are different decisions and worth making separately.

One related limitation, while being straight about boundaries: on hardware using Modern Standby, the system can take over on battery regardless of what an application requests. No application overrides that.

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.

Customer review 01

PinPoint: Always On Top saves me so much time as I can organize all my report materials without having to flip between windows or tabs. I love the fact that it is straightforward and simple.

Senior Accountant · Manufacturing Company · United States · PinPoint Reviewed About PinPoint
Customer review 02

I used to get so frustrated when my Taskbar would freeze and disappear. Taskbar Sentinel has eliminated that pain without subjecting me to another subscription.

Darren · Calgary, Alberta, Canada · Taskbar Sentinel Reviewed About Taskbar Sentinel
Customer review 03

OpticBatch and MetaForge are a lifesaver for me as a person with a passion for photography. They give me the ability to stay organized and keep personal information confidential when I post pictures online.

Sherri · United States · OpticBatch & MetaForge Reviewed Browse the full catalog

Quotes are shown with customer permission; names and locations appear as reviewers provided them.

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

Will a keep-awake app keep my Teams status green?

Not on its own. Presence is derived from time since the last input event, and a power request generates no input, so the idle timer keeps counting. Preventing sleep and appearing active are separate mechanisms.

Why does preventing sleep not affect my status?

They talk to different parts of Windows. A power request tells the power manager not to sleep. Presence indicators read an idle timer fed by keyboard and mouse events. Holding a request produces no such events, so the timer correctly keeps rising.

What does change a status back to available?

Injected input — which is what mouse jigglers do. It works, and Windows flags injected input at the OS level so any monitoring tool can see it. There is no undetectable version of this.

Does StayGreen have any presence feature?

An optional one, off by default and behind an explicit consent step that cannot be bypassed by editing settings. It only emits while a hold is active, never while locked, and only inside active hours you set. The app states plainly that it is detectable.

So what is StayGreen actually for?

Keeping the machine and display awake when you need them: presentations, long reads, unattended renders and backups, docked clamshell sessions — with guardrails that pause on battery, Battery Saver, and a closed lid with no display.

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

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

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