A radio station Mac is unusual, as far as Macs go. Nobody's touching the keyboard or moving the mouse for hours — sometimes days — at a stretch. To an operating system built around the assumption that a human is nearby, that looks exactly like a machine nobody's using anymore. And macOS's very reasonable response to "nobody's using this" is to put it to sleep.
On a laptop sitting in a bag, that's the right call. On the Mac running your station, it's dead air. The fix is one toggle. Here it is, plus the handful of settings around it that are just as important and much easier to overlook.
The One Setting That Actually Matters
Everything else in this article is a nice-to-have. This one isn't optional.
Prevent Automatic Sleep
Turn on Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off. That's it — that single toggle is what keeps the computer itself running around the clock.
It's a stored preference, not a running process, so there's nothing to relaunch and nothing that can quietly stop working after a restart. Set it once and it holds.
Stop the Display From Getting in the Way Too
The setting above keeps the computer awake even after the display goes dark. But if you want to be able to glance at your automation screen — or check it over screen sharing — without waking anything up first, tell the display to simply never turn off in the first place.
Keep the Display On
Set Turn display off when inactive to Never.
Don't Let It Lock You Out
While you're on this screen, also check Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off. If that's set to anything aggressive, a glance at the machine — in person or over remote screen sharing — can dump you at a login prompt instead of your automation software. Set it to Never, or at least a long interval.
Two More Settings Worth Flipping While You're In There
These don't stop the Mac from sleeping — they make sure it comes back on its own when something outside your control interrupts it.
Start Up Automatically After a Power Failure
If this Mac is a desktop (Mac mini, Mac Pro, Mac Studio) sitting behind a rack somewhere, this one matters as much as the sleep setting. Without it, a brief power blip — even a few seconds — leaves the machine sitting there powered off until someone physically walks over and presses the button. With it on, power comes back, and so does your station.
Turn On Automatic Login
Set Automatic login to your station's account. Combined with the setting above, a restart — planned or from a power failure — comes all the way back up to a working desktop by itself. Without it, the Mac boots to a login screen and waits indefinitely for someone to type a password that, on an unattended machine, nobody's there to type.
The Software Update Trap
This is the one that catches people who did everything above correctly. The Mac never sleeps, it starts up after a power failure, it logs in on its own — and then macOS quietly installs an update overnight and restarts itself anyway, right in the middle of automated playback.
Control the Timing of Updates
Turn off Install macOS updates. You can leave update checking and downloading on if you want a heads-up that something's available — just keep the actual install, and the restart that comes with it, in your own hands. Update deliberately, during a window when you can confirm everything comes back up correctly afterward.
If Your Station Mac Is a Laptop
Everything above assumes the lid stays open. Close a MacBook's lid and macOS sleeps it regardless of any Energy setting, unless it's plugged into power and has an external display, keyboard, or mouse attached — and even then, clamshell behavior has shifted across macOS versions and isn't something to simply trust. If a laptop is your dedicated broadcast machine, the simplest, most reliable approach is to just leave the lid open.
Belt and Suspenders
The built-in setting is free and it works — you don't need anything else. But if you'd like a visible, at-a-glance confirmation that sleep is being blocked (handy when you're troubleshooting over a remote session and want a quick sanity check), a small menu bar utility like Amphetamine gives you that indicator on top of the system setting. Treat it as a nice-to-have, not a substitute.
Quick Checklist
- Prevent automatic sleeping when the display is off — the one that actually matters.
- Turn display off when inactive: Never.
- Require password after screen saver / display off: Never (or a long interval).
- Start up automatically after a power failure: on, for desktop Macs.
- Automatic login: on, to your station account.
- Install macOS updates automatically: off — update on your own schedule instead.
- Laptop? Leave the lid open.
None of this takes more than a few minutes, and once it's set, it's set — these are stored preferences, not background processes that can quietly stop running. Handle it once during setup, and your Mac stays exactly as reliable as the automation software running on it.
A Mac that stays awake deserves automation that never sleeps on the job either.
TuneTracker System 7 is built for 24/7 unattended broadcast on the Mac. Free version available.
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