Keep Awake — KDE Plasma 6 Widget (Amphetamine for Linux / KDE)

An Amphetamine-style toggle for KDE Plasma 6. Prevents your system from going to sleep — while still letting the screen turn off. Lightweight, no daemon of its own, just a thin UI on top of systemd-inhibit.

If you ever wanted a Caffeine alternative for KDE that does not keep your display blazing all night, this is it.

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✨ Features

• 🟢 Inhibit suspend, allow screen-off by default. Uses systemd-inhibit --what=sleep, so only the sleep/hibernate path is blocked. Idle handling (screen blanking, screensaver, lock) is left alone — just like macOS Amphetamine's "Allow display sleep" option.
• 🌗 "Allow display to sleep" switch in the popup. Flip it off and the widget also inhibits idle (--what=sleep:idle) so the screen stays on too. Setting persists across reboots and can be switched live while active.
• 🖱️ One-click toggle from the panel. Left-click for popup with status, middle-click to toggle directly from the system tray.
• 🧊 Tiny footprint. No background daemon written by us — Plasma + systemd do all the work. The widget just calls systemctl --user start/stop on a small unit file.
• 🔁 Survives panel reloads. State is owned by a user systemd unit, so the inhibit doesn't vanish when Plasma restarts.
• 🎨 Native Plasma 6 look. Built with Plasma's QML APIs (Kirigami, PlasmaComponents). Respects your theme and panel size.
• 🆓 MIT licensed.

🤔 Why this exists

KDE Plasma's built-in "Block Sleep and Screen Locking" toggle does exactly what it says — it blocks both. There is no first-party way (in Plasma 6 as of this writing) to keep the machine awake but let the display power off after the usual idle timeout.

On macOS, Amphetamine solves this neatly: keep the Mac awake, but let the screen sleep. On Linux there's Stimulator (works, but lives in its own window), and there's the venerable Caffeine (great, but historically keeps the display on too).

Keep Awake is a tiny native Plasma widget that just toggles a systemd-inhibit --what=sleep lock from the panel. That's the whole idea.

📦 Install

One-liner (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/burakgon/keep-awake-kde.git
cd keep-awake-kde
./install.sh

That script does two things:

1. Drops ~/.config/systemd/user/keep-awake.service and reloads the user systemd manager.
2. Installs the plasmoid via kpackagetool6 into ~/.local/share/plasma/plasmoids/.

Then right-click your panel → Add Widgets → search "Keep Awake" and drag it where you want it.

Manual install

# 1. systemd user unit
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp systemd/keep-awake.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload

# 2. plasmoid
kpackagetool6 --type Plasma/Applet --install ./package
# or, if already installed:
kpackagetool6 --type Plasma/Applet --upgrade ./package

Requirements

• KDE Plasma 6 (Plasma 5 is not supported — the QML uses Plasma 6 imports)
• systemd with a working user manager (default on every modern systemd distro)
• kpackagetool6 (ships with Plasma 6)

Tested on Arch / CachyOS with Plasma 6.6. Should work on Fedora KDE Spin, openSUSE Tumbleweed, KDE Neon, Kubuntu 24.04+, EndeavourOS, Manjaro KDE.

🚀 Usage

After adding the widget to your panel:

Action	Result
Left-click the tray icon	Opens a popup with status + Turn On/Off button
Middle-click the tray icon	Toggles immediately, no popup
Hover the icon	Tooltip shows current state

You can also drive it from a terminal — handy for shell aliases, keybindings, or scripts:

# Default mode: inhibit suspend, screen can still sleep
systemctl --user start  keep-awake.service
systemctl --user stop   keep-awake.service

# "Display stays on" mode: inhibit suspend AND idle
systemctl --user start  keep-awake-full.service
systemctl --user stop   keep-awake-full.service

systemd-inhibit --list | grep keep-awake     # see the active lock

In the widget's popup, the Allow display to sleep switch selects which of the two services runs. Off = screen stays on (--what=sleep:idle), on = screen can sleep (--what=sleep). The setting is remembered.

Bind a global shortcut in System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts if you want a hotkey.

🛠️ How it works

┌──────────────────┐   start/stop   ┌──────────────────────────┐   acquires   ┌──────────────────┐
│  Plasma widget   │ ─────────────▶ │ keep-awake.service       │ ───────────▶ │ logind inhibit   │
│  (QML + Kirigami)│                │ (user systemd unit)      │              │ lock --what=sleep│
└──────────────────┘                └──────────────────────────┘              └──────────────────┘
        ▲                                                                              │
        │                          poll: systemctl --user is-active                    │
        └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

There are two tiny user units, each one line:

# keep-awake.service        — inhibit suspend, allow screen-off (default)
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemd-inhibit --what=sleep      --who=keep-awake --why=user-request --mode=block sleep infinity

# keep-awake-full.service   — inhibit suspend AND screen-off
ExecStart=/usr/bin/systemd-inhibit --what=sleep:idle --who=keep-awake --why=user-request --mode=block sleep infinity

Only one of the two runs at a time. The widget picks the right one based on the Allow display to sleep switch.

systemd-inhibit documents these inhibition types (man page):

• sleep — block suspend / hibernate
• idle — block automatic idle detection (this is what dims/blanks the screen)
• shutdown — block reboot/poweroff

We deliberately take only sleep, leaving idle free. So your screen-off / lock-screen / screensaver behavior is unaffected.

🆚 Comparison

	Keep Awake (this)	KDE built-in "Block Sleep"	Stimulator	Caffeine-ng	systemd-inhibit CLI
Native Plasma widget	✅	✅	❌ (standalone window)	⚠️ tray indicator	❌
Lets screen turn off	✅	❌	✅ (separate toggle)	✅ (v1.2+)	✅ (--what=sleep)
Survives panel reload	✅ (systemd)	✅	❌	⚠️	✅
No external runtime	✅	✅	❌ (Flatpak)	❌ (Python)	✅

🧪 Verify it's doing what you think

KDE's Powerdevil has had quirks around respecting systemd-inhibit (bug 457859, bug 464119). Run this sanity check on your machine:

1. System Settings → Power Management → set Turn off screen to 1 min, Suspend session to 2 min.
2. Turn the widget on.
3. Walk away for 3 minutes.

You should see the screen go black around 1 min, but the system should still be awake when you come back (mouse-wiggle wakes the display instantly, no resume-from-suspend lag, no lid-light cycle).

# while it's running, sanity-check the lock exists:
systemd-inhibit --list | grep keep-awake

❓ FAQ

Does this drain my battery like a normal "caffeine" tool? No more than necessary. The CPU still goes idle, the disk still parks, the display still turns off. We only block the suspend state transition.

Will it prevent the system from sleeping when I close the lid? Yes, while the toggle is on. The inhibit lock blocks the suspend path regardless of trigger.

What happens at logout / reboot? The user systemd service stops with the session, so the inhibit lock is released cleanly. State does not persist across reboots — you turn it on when you want it on.

Will it work on Wayland / X11? Both. It doesn't touch the display server; it only talks to systemd-logind.

Plasma 5? Not supported. The QML uses org.kde.plasma.plasmoid (the Plasma 6 PlasmoidItem API) and org.kde.plasma.plasma5support. Patches welcome if someone wants a Plasma 5 branch.

🧹 Uninstall

./uninstall.sh

Or manually:

systemctl --user stop keep-awake.service keep-awake-full.service
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/keep-awake.service ~/.config/systemd/user/keep-awake-full.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
kpackagetool6 --type Plasma/Applet --remove com.burakgon.keepawake

🤝 Contributing

PRs welcome — especially for:

• Translations (i18n strings are wrapped in i18n(...))
• Optional "Auto-on for N minutes/hours" timer mode, like Amphetamine sessions
• Per-application triggers (auto-on while a specific app/window is focused)
• Icon polish (a proper coffee-cup / pill icon set instead of redshift-status-*)
• Global hotkey integration (System Settings → Shortcuts is currently the way; a built-in shortcut would be nicer)

Open an issue first if it's a bigger change.

📄 License

MIT. Do whatever you want with it; attribution appreciated.

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