Recently my IT department (finally) allowed me to install macOS Ventura. Since that upgrade my Mac randomly freezes for several seconds, a few times per day. A colleague told me it might be Amphetamine causing this.
If so, did you switch to one of the many other “keep your Mac awake” tools? Which one?
In Amphetamine it was possible to automatically enable it when connecting to a specific (home) WiFi network. Many Apps seem to be missing that, but I use it…
(Might use a Keyboard Maestro macro and the CLI caffeinate command for that?)
Sorry, but having no problem with Amphetamine or the machines freezing (far as I can tell) on either of my machines (iMac and MacBook). macOS 13.2.1 and Amphetamine 5.2.2. As Amphetamine is their current target bad-actor, perhaps contact them. They would be the best to notice problems if reported to them.
Like the other people who have answered, I have had no problems running Amphetamine on several versions of macOS. I am currently on the latest version of Ventura and it has not caused me any issues.
I used my Mac to play all of the backing music in our school production of Footloose. Over the four shows I did not experience any freezes, and Amphetamine was running all of the time to stop my screen sleeping during the show.
My M1 MBA has recently started disconnecting one or both of my T7 external SSDs one or two times a day. Running Amphetamine is preventing that from occurring.
I’m currently at work using our school’s internet connection. This has filtering in place and all internet traffic is logged. As I don’t really want to explain why I have done a search for Amphetamine Enhancer, please could you explain what this is (or what it does)? Is it a feature built-in to the program?
What is Amphetamine Enhancer?
Amphetamine Enhancer is a helper application that enhances a couple of Amphetamine’s features. In its 1.0 release, Amphetamine Enhancer adds the following abilities to Amphetamine:
• Adds a fail-safe for the closed-display mode feature found in Amphetamine 5.0+
• Gives Amphetamine 5.0+ the ability to use all running processes with Triggers and app-based sessions
Never had the need for apps like Amphetamine. I have my iMac set to never sleep but to turn the monitor off after an hour. I left it on while on a 2 month trip as it runs a bunch of e-mail rules for me. All my mail got sorted into mailboxes and where I wanted it while reading on my iPad. I did the same with my MBA before I got the iMac with same results.
Although my Mac seemed more stable without Amphetamine, I have had two more freezes since not running that tool. Thus, you’re probably all right; Amphetamine is most likely not the root cause.
How can I investigate this issue?
The problem is that I cannot open any new Apps (like Activity Monitor) during such a freeze and the CPU indicator of iStat Menus showed less than 15% load, until the Mac becomes responsive again.
(I’m also not in full control of this Mac; I have admin rights, but IT installs a lot of software on it)
What has often been reported to work is to unplug all external devices, disk drives, and docks, etc. Then add them back one at a time until finding a culprit.
Since I have now encountered this issue once or twice without Amphetamine running, that App is likely indeed not the root case (though the problem seems to occur less when Amphetamine is not running).
Maybe this topic (from another poster) will help find the root cause?
