Shaping the Scope
StayAwake primarily serves my personal use case. It is not intended to be a universal tool with countless options—such solutions already exist in abundance. Instead, I’m embracing pure minimalism. My needs are clearly defined: keep the system awake—either including the monitor or without it. As an efficient shortcut, I also want the ability to manually turn off the monitor immediately when needed.
Solving One Problem Well
All too often, tools are designed too broadly from the outset in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. This frequently leads to the core use case becoming merely a compromise that no longer feels harmonious. I prefer to solve one concrete problem properly rather than address many generic problems only superficially.
Anyone seeking precisely this simplicity will be happy with StayAwake. For all more complex scenarios, the tool is deliberately not suitable.
Software that tries to make everyone happy often ends up as a cumbersome Swiss Army knife where you can barely find the one blade you actually need. This radical scope limitation is an act of technical discipline. It allows for an implementation that does without complex UI logic and instead achieves a tactile efficiency—like using modifier keys such as ‘Shift + Left-Click’ for instant-off mode—that gets lost in overloaded programs.