System awake
The Mac does not go to sleep while it works for you, not even if you touch nothing.
penombra
Coming soon for Mac
The right darkness
for working at night.
Penombra lives in the Mac menu bar and does two things at once, it dims the screen below the minimum the hardware allows and keeps the machine awake while it works for you. Born for late night coding sessions, when you need a barely readable screen and a Mac that does not fall asleep.
The darkness
A veil, not a filter
Below a certain threshold the backlight goes no lower, and there Penombra lays a veil over every connected display. The colours stay as they are, calibration is untouched, and if the app quits the veil dies with it. It is safe by construction, not by promise.
Every connected display has its own slider, so the laptop and the external monitor do not have to sit at the same level. Below are the presets, and at the bottom wakefulness, with the two levers separate because you do not always want both.
Wakefulness
And meanwhile the Mac does not fall asleep
It is the other half of the job, and it matters as much as the darkness. A preset can keep the Mac and the display awake together, so a long build reaches the end, a render does not stop halfway, a transfer is not interrupted because you got up from your desk. The two levers are separate, you can keep the system working while letting the display switch off, or the other way round.
Display on
The display stays on as long as needed, or you let it switch off on its own.
Battery threshold
Below the percentage you choose wakefulness switches off, and the laptop is not left drained.
Presets
Light and wakefulness in a single gesture
A preset holds together how much darkness you want and how much sleep to deny the Mac, with its own icon and its own shortcut. You turn it on from the panel or from the keyboard, and when you turn it off everything goes back exactly as it was, even if you moved the sliders by hand in the meantime.
Why it is different
The two halves are never together
The market is split in two. On one side the apps that dim the screen, on the other those that keep the Mac from falling asleep, and whoever uses one almost always ends up installing the other too and keeping them aligned by hand. In Penombra they are the same thing, inside the same preset, switched on and off by the same gesture.
Darkness and wakefulness together
A preset says how much darkness you want and how much sleep to deny the Mac. Neither has to be remembered separately.
No special permission
No Accessibility, no DDC, no gamma tables. If the app quits the veil goes with it, and the screen cannot stay stuck in the dark.
Rules on what you actually do
Not just schedules. The darkness follows the program that is running, the microphone in use, the minutes you touch nothing, the power you unplug.
Automations
It turns on by itself when needed
A preset can start at a precise time or at your local sunset. Wakefulness can follow the monitor you plug in or the app you open. And then there are the rules, which stay true as long as a condition lasts, while a certain program runs, after a few minutes in which you touch nothing, during a video call, when the laptop switches to battery.
When several rules hold at once the first in the list wins, and you decide the order by dragging them. A rule can be suspended without deleting it, and nothing switches off what you turned on by hand.
Actions
It does not snap, it fades
Gradual transition
The light fades instead of snapping, for the duration you choose. Not the safeguards, the emergency stays instant.
Sequences
A preset hands over to another when it expires, so the evening walks itself towards darkness.
Dawn ramp
Before dawn the veil pulls back slowly, and when the sun rises it switches off. If you want, a notification tells you.
Integrations
It talks to the rest of the Mac
What Penombra can do it can also do from outside. There is a penombra:// address to trigger it from a script or a hook, and there are Shortcuts actions to slot into your own.
And there is the Focus filter, which ties a preset to a macOS Focus. You turn on Work and the darkness comes with it, you turn it off and everything goes back, without you touching anything.
How it is really used
Four ordinary evenings
The build that finishes by itself
It is eleven and you start a long build. The process rule turns on Deep night as soon as it starts, the screen drops below the panel minimum and the Mac does not fall asleep until it is done. When the process exits, everything goes back without you touching anything.
The seven o'clock call
The microphone comes on and the video call preset with it. The room stays dark, the display stays on for the whole call and the Mac does not sleep while you listen without touching the keyboard. You hang up and the light goes back to what it was.
The evening that walks itself
At sunset Evening reading starts, and when it expires it hands over to Deep night. Before dawn the veil pulls back slowly, minute by minute, and when the sun rises it switches off on its own. You did nothing in the meantime.
The laptop you unplug
You finish the day, pick up the Mac and leave your desk. If you turned on shutdown when unplugged, wakefulness leaves with the charger, and below the battery threshold you chose it switches off anyway, so you never find the laptop drained by a session you forgot about.
Two tiers
Free for what you need every evening
The veil, wakefulness and the three evening presets are there from first launch and they stay. The safeguards are not for sale, emergency full light and the battery threshold shutdown belong to everyone.
Always included
Penombra
- Veil on every display, system and display wakefulness
- Evening reading, Deep night and Off to bed
- Emergency full light and gradual transition
One time unlock, no subscription
Penombra Pro
- Your own presets, as many as you like, with your changes
- Keyboard shortcuts for presets
- Schedules, sunset and gradual dawn
- Rules on process, inactivity, microphone and power
- Preset sequences that hand over to each other
- URL scheme, Shortcuts and Focus filter