Never Sleep for Ubuntu

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Keep an Ubuntu laptop awake with the display off. This is an Ubuntu/GNOME X11 counterpart to mac-never-sleep, developed and tested on Ubuntu 22.04.

It has one narrow job: hold a process-scoped systemd-logind inhibitor while using real DPMS display sleep. It does not change GNOME power settings, /etc/systemd/logind.conf, or any other persistent power policy.

Behaviour

• on starts a detached daemon under systemd-inhibit and returns immediately.
• The display turns off about 1.5 seconds after start via xset dpms force off.
• Keyboard or mouse activity wakes the display normally. The daemon does not turn it off again while the local user is active; it waits for 45 seconds of GNOME idle time.
• idle, sleep, and handle-lid-switch are inhibited only while the daemon lives. Quit or crash releases them automatically.
• On battery, the session ends below 20%. A requested duration also ends the session.
• The GNOME tray and CLI control the same daemon state.

Closed-lid operation is still hardware- and firmware-dependent. Keep the lid open with the panel asleep for the most reliable and thermally safe unattended operation.

Build and use

Requirements: Ubuntu GNOME on X11, Rust 1.88, systemd-inhibit, xset, gdbus, and notify-send.

Install the desktop dependencies on Ubuntu:

sudo apt install x11-utils libnotify-bin python3-gi gir1.2-ayatanaappindicator3-0.1 zenity

cargo build --release
./target/release/never-sleep doctor
./target/release/never-sleep on --for 8h
./target/release/never-sleep status --json
./target/release/never-sleep off

Durations are indefinite, hours (8h), minutes (30m), or local wall clock (until=08:00).

Install the CLI and tray for the current user:

./scripts/install.sh

The installer places two executables in ~/.local/bin, adds one GNOME autostart entry in ~/.config/autostart, and starts the menu-bar indicator immediately. A runtime lock prevents duplicate indicators. It does not use sudo. To remove them:

./scripts/uninstall.sh

Agent API

The command and JSON vocabulary follows the reference project:

never-sleep on --for 8h
never-sleep status --json
never-sleep off

Stable status fields are active, display, lid, on_ac, battery, remaining_secs, user_present, elapsed_secs, stop_reason, stop_reason_code, screen_off_enabled, and lid_awake_enabled inside the top-level status object.

Runtime state is stored under $XDG_STATE_HOME/never-sleep, or ~/.local/state/never-sleep when XDG_STATE_HOME is unset. NEVER_SLEEP_DATA_DIR overrides it for testing.

How it works

Capability	Mechanism	Persistence
Block idle/system sleep	systemd-inhibit --what=idle:sleep:handle-lid-switch --mode=block	Process lifetime only
Turn the display off	xset dpms force off	One request; no setting rewrite
Detect local presence	GNOME Mutter IdleMonitor.GetIdletime over the session D-Bus	Read-only
Battery protection	/sys/class/power_supply	Read-only
Tray	GTK 3 + Ayatana AppIndicator	User autostart entry

The implementation currently targets GNOME on X11. Wayland needs a different display-off backend; doctor reports the active session type instead of pretending that xset works there.

Development

cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test

Contributions are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, and the Code of Conduct.

License

MIT