Your screen goes dark halfway through a presentation. A long render finishes while the PC is asleep. You are reading a forty-page document and Windows decides you have left. StayGreen keeps your Windows display awake for exactly as long as you need it — and then gets out of the way on its own. IT KNOWS WHEN TO STOP This is the part that matters. Most keep-awake tools stay on until you remember to turn them off, which is how a laptop arrives at a meeting with a dead battery. StayGreen steps aside automatically: • On battery power, and when Battery Saver switches on, it hands control back to your Windows power settings • When you close the lid with no external monitor attached — and it keeps working when one is • The moment you lock your PC, it releases the power request • Timed sessions end by themselves, so there is nothing to remember You never have to trust yourself to switch it off. TIMED SESSIONS One click for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or 2 hours, or type any duration up to 7 days. A live countdown shows exactly when it ends, and you can extend or end it at any time. When the timer runs out the display is released — StayGreen never holds it a second longer. PER-APP RULES Name the executables that actually matter — your presentation app, your editor, your monitoring dashboard — and StayGreen holds the display only while one of them is in the foreground. Switch to your mail client and it lets go. Switch back and it resumes. This runs on a Windows foreground event hook rather than a polling loop, so it costs nothing while it waits. CHOOSE WHAT STAYS AWAKE • Display and system — keeps the screen lit and blocks sleep. The right choice for presenting, reading, and watching. • System only — blocks sleep but lets the screen turn off. The right choice for long unattended work: backups, builds, renders, downloads, virus scans, large file copies. QUIET BY DESIGN StayGreen lives in your notification area. The tray icon is green while a power request is held, amber while paused, grey while idle. Left-click toggles it. There is no splash screen, no background service, no polling loop, and no notification spam. IT TELLS YOU THE TRUTH On laptops that use Modern Standby, Windows ends keep-awake requests a few minutes after the sleep timeout while running on battery. No application can override this. Rather than showing a reassuring green light that is lying to you, StayGreen detects the situation and says so. The status readout always describes what Windows has actually granted — not what the app asked for. WHAT STAYGREEN DOES NOT DO Worth knowing before you install: • It does not simulate keyboard or mouse input by default. Nothing is injected into your session unless you deliberately turn on Presence mode and accept its disclosure. • It does not keep Microsoft Teams or Slack showing as Available on its own. Those apps read keyboard and mouse activity, not whether your screen is on, so holding the display awake has no effect on your status. Any tool that claims otherwise without simulating input is misleading you. • It does not change your Windows power plan or edit your sleep settings. It asks Windows for a power request and releases it cleanly. PRESENCE MODE (OPTIONAL, OFF BY DEFAULT) For the narrow case where your status should reflect that you are at your desk reading rather than typing, Presence mode sends a single unused keypress every four minutes to reset the system idle timer. It is deliberately hard to switch on. It cannot be enabled without reading a disclosure that states plainly that this input is detectable by monitoring software, that it may conflict with your employer's acceptable-use policy, and that the decision is yours. It runs only while the display is actually held, never while your session is locked, and only inside hours you choose. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION • No network access. The app makes no outbound connections, and its content security policy blocks them. • No accounts, no sign-in, no cloud sync. • No telemetry, no analytics, no advertising, no tracking. • Your settings live in a single local file on your own PC. BUILT FOR EVERYONE • 20 languages, including right-to-left layout for Arabic • Light and dark themes, with light as the default • Full keyboard operation, screen-reader labelling, and visible focus throughout • Honours Windows High Contrast, reduced motion, and increased contrast settings • Colour is never the only signal: every state is carried by shape and text as well • Built to WCAG 2.2 AA, with contrast verified automatically for every colour pairing in both themes WHO IT IS FOR People who present and teach. Engineers watching builds, deployments, and long-running jobs. Analysts and traders watching dashboards that must not sleep. Editors sitting through renders and exports. Anyone who reads on screen for long stretches. Anyone on a locked-down work PC who cannot change the power policy but needs the screen to stay on for the next twenty minutes.