LidGuard

Terms

Last updated 9 September 2026

What LidGuard is

LidGuard is a menu-bar application for macOS 14 and later. It watches supported coding agents and holds macOS power assertions while one of them is working, so the machine does not go to sleep mid-task, and releases them when the work stops.

What your payment buys

One payment of $1 buys a permanent licence key for LidGuard, including future updates. A key activates on up to 3 Macs at a time. You can move a licence between machines yourself: Settings → Licence → Release this Mac frees that slot straight away.

Before you buy there is a 14-day trial with nothing withheld — every feature, no card, no account. When the trial ends LidGuard stops holding your Mac awake. It does not delete anything, keep watching you, or nag beyond one line in its own menu.

If you installed LidGuard 1.0

Version 1.0 was published unlocked, and these terms said in writing that payment unlocked nothing. That promise is kept: LidGuard detects an install that predates licensing and stays permanently unlocked on that Mac, with no key and no trial. You are welcome to buy a licence anyway, and thank you if you do — but you are not being asked to pay for something you already had.

The licence key

The key is a bearer credential: anyone holding it can use it, within the 3-machine limit. Look after it like a password. If you lose it, have it sent again. Sharing a key publicly, or reselling keys, is the one thing that will get a licence revoked.

What the app can and cannot guarantee

This matters more than most terms, so it is stated plainly rather than buried:

• Standard power assertions prevent idle sleep. They do not prevent the sleep macOS triggers when you close the lid on battery. No application can, using assertions alone.
• The optional deep-hold helper does prevent lid-close sleep, by setting the system-wide disablesleep power-management flag. It requires an administrator password to install and it changes a system setting on your Mac.
• Sleep behaviour also depends on your hardware, macOS version, power source, and your own Energy Saver settings. LidGuard reports what it is actually holding, but it cannot override the operating system.

No warranty

LidGuard is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including but not limited to warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the developer is not liable for any lost work, lost data, lost time, battery drain, thermal effects, or any indirect or consequential damages arising from use of the software.

The deep-hold helper

If you install it, the helper is a launchd daemon that runs as root and toggles the system sleep setting. It re-enables sleep on its own if the app stops refreshing its state file for more than two minutes, so a crash cannot leave the Mac permanently unable to sleep. You can remove it at any time from Settings, or with brew uninstall --cask lidguard.

Privacy

Agent status never leaves your Mac. It is received on a loopback-only endpoint bound to 127.0.0.1, which nothing outside the machine can reach, and your settings are stored locally. LidGuard does not track usage, and has no analytics.

Licensing is the one thing that talks to a server, and only when it has to. When you activate a key — and roughly weekly afterwards to confirm the licence is still valid — the app sends three things: your licence key, this Mac’s hardware UUID (IOPlatformUUID, the identifier that makes the 3-machine limit possible) and the computer name you have given it, so that the Licence screen can tell your machines apart. Nothing else is transmitted: not which agents you run, not what you are working on, not when you are working.

That data is stored on Cloudflare in the licence record for your key, alongside the email address Stripe passes on at purchase. It exists to enforce the device limit and to send you your key. Ask, by replying to your Stripe receipt, and it will be deleted along with the licence.

Payments are handled by Stripe, who process your card details under their own terms and privacy policy. The developer never sees your card number.

Between checks, LidGuard runs entirely offline on a signed permission slip that is valid for 45 days. Losing your network connection never stops the app working.

Trade marks

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, Copilot and other agent names are trade marks of their respective owners. LidGuard is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Anthropic, OpenAI, GitHub, Google or Apple.

Changes and contact

These terms may change; the date above records the current version. For anything to do with a payment, reply to your Stripe receipt — it reaches the developer directly.