DriveKeepAlive
Keeps your external drives from sleeping, and tells you the moment one disconnects unexpectedly. A free, lightweight macOS menu bar utility.
Keeps your external drives from sleeping, and tells you the moment one disconnects unexpectedly. A free, lightweight macOS menu bar utility.
Prevents macOS idle sleep while active, so external drives stay mounted and responsive instead of dropping off mid-task.
Tells the difference between a deliberate eject and a drive that just disappeared, and notifies you only when it's the latter.
Every external, ejectable drive is detected automatically. Choose exactly which ones to keep awake.
Set the keep-alive interval to 30, 45, 60, or 120 seconds depending on how aggressive you need it to be.
A running log in the menu bar dropdown shows recent mounts, disconnects, and pings, so you always know what happened.
Optionally starts automatically when you log in, and otherwise stays out of the way in the menu bar.
Download the zip above and double-click it to unzip DriveKeepAlive.app.
Drag it into Applications so it shows up in Launchpad like any other app.
Right-click the app and choose "Open" the first time, instead of double-clicking. This app isn't notarized by Apple, so a plain double-click will be blocked by Gatekeeper, right-click → Open lets you confirm it once.
Click the menu bar icon and toggle "Keep drives awake" to start. Enable "Launch at Login" if you want it running automatically.
| macOS | 13 Ventura or later |
| Architecture | Apple Silicon and Intel |
| Category | Utilities |
| Permissions | None required. Notifications are optional, for disconnect alerts. |
| Languages | English, Dutch |