Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2020/02/05/one-switch-my-new-must-have-mac-utility/
Would you like it if you could have toggles for Dark Mode, Do Not Disturb, Night Shift, screen lock, and more, all accessed from a single menu bar icon? Josh Centers recently discovered that the One Switch utility can do all that and more.
Thanks, Josh. This looks like it could be very useful. Readers should also consider Parallels Toolbox (free with Parallels or you can purchase it separately) as it does many of the same things - and more. (Note I don’t work for them - just use their software.)
I’m grateful for this posting, because it told me about Amphetamine. I want to be able to put the display to sleep without sleeping the system (mainly because sleeping the system makes Google want me to sign in again).
I can do that with caffeinate – more precisely, “nohup caffeinate -i &” – but not the current Caffeine, which I guess uses different flags on caffeinate. But Amphetamine works (on the basis of one try, which should be enough).
You can do that via a hot corner.
You can do that via a hot corner.
I do use the “Put Display to Sleep” hot corner, and sure, the Mac may not think the system is asleep, but Google thinks I should log in again when I come back. Caffeinate or Amphetamine stop that.
Or maybe I’m misunderstanding? It’s totally possible.
This is one of the best ads for Setapp, because I found One Switch in the same way.
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Been doing that for years on my MBPs with ctrl-shift-pwr. (IIRC ctrl-shift-eject on older models)
That actually turns the display off. I also have a hot corner for screensaver.
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Initially I thought it required a $9.99/month charge as part of SetApp but it turned out I followed the wrong link to simply download OneSwitch. Imho the licensing tier is quite fair, starting out at $4.99 for a single device license and $7.99 for two devices and increasing from there.
My appreciation for this tip Josh.
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Been doing that for years on my MBPs with ctrl-shift-pwr. (IIRC ctrl-shift-eject on older models)
[I should start by apologizing for introducing my irrelevant query into an innocent discussion. If a higher power such as Josh or Adam wants to move or delete this thread, I’ll be unoffended.]
Thanks, Simon, for the suggestion, which is interesting in itself. I keep forgetting keyboard shortcuts that would make life easier.
Sadly, however, ctrl-shift-(power/eject) puts not just the display but also the system firmly to sleep, and when I wake it up Google is convinced I should give it my password again. This is annoying, even though it is slightly faster than logging in again after logging out (the obvious alternative to a sleep command), so I wanted something Caffeine-like. The command-line caffeinate does that, if you pick the right options (such as -i: “prevent the system from idle sleeping”), but Caffeine does not do it. If it calls caffeinated, it must use other options.
Happily, Amphetamine seems to do what I want: I can put things to “sleep” with a hot corner and have them ready to go when I return, without a full login.
Presumably Google behaves this way because of an interaction between two giant corporations, though why it picks on me and not on my wife I don’t know: she does roughly the same Googly things with her account on the same machine.
Odd. I know shift-ctrl-power puts only the display to sleep. The system does not sleep (I keep on working on it through ssh for example). At least on my MBPs. Haven’t tried yet on an iMac, those are getting very rare around here. I know it works that way on El Cap and Mojave. Haven’t yet tried on Mojave. At some point long ago Apple changed a few combos, but IIRC that was way back, around (High) Sierra.
To sleep the entire system at least these days on a MBP you need to press and hold power.
Odd conversation.
Multiple key combinations to achieve what? outside of Amphetamine!
Bummer. Requires Mojave and my iMac can’t go past High Sierra. Oh, well, maybe my iMac will die in about 5 years so I can get one that runs Mojave.
Bought this, credit card has been debited, licence email received, try to activate Get a message saying “Activate Error Specifies that we were unable to complete the activation of this product.”
Fireball Studio’s website has no support or other contact details, Paddle.com does not reply.
@jcenters do you by chance have any other way of contacting the supplier?
Thanks, Gobit
Inside the app, in preferences, there is a “Send Feedback” button which creates an email to openallen at gmail dot com
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Thank you tjluoma – 
one of those “I couldn’t see it for looking” moments.
All sorted, activated and running sweetly.
Thanks, again. Cheers, Gobit
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No worries. We’ve all been there.