Keep Microsoft Teams green on Mac (without a mouse jiggler)

Microsoft Teams shows you as Away after about five minutes without input. Step away to read, take a call on your phone, or grab a coffee, and your dot goes yellow, even though you are right there.

Most people try a keep-awake app first. It does not work. Here is why, and what actually keeps you green.

Why Amphetamine and Caffeine do not keep you green

Apps like Amphetamine, Caffeine and KeepingYouAwake stop your Mac from sleeping and stop the screensaver. That is all they do. They are great for long downloads or watching a video.

But Teams does not decide you are away because your Mac slept. It watches for input: keyboard, mouse, and which app has focus. Preventing sleep changes none of that, so Teams still flips you to Away on the five-minute timer. Your screen stays on, your dot still goes yellow.

What actually keeps you green

To stay green, something has to reset the system idle timer, the count of seconds since your last keypress or mouse move. Reset it and every presence-aware app (Teams, Slack, Zoom, Discord) reads you as active at once, because they all read the same system idle timer.

Stay Green does exactly that, quietly. When you have genuinely gone idle, it sends one harmless keystroke (F15, which does nothing visible) and a zero-distance mouse move to reset the timer. Nothing jumps on screen, there is no dongle, and it lives in the menu bar with no Dock icon.

Why not a mouse jiggler

A physical mouse jiggler or a cursor-moving app works, but it is crude: your pointer drifts across the screen, it can fight you while you work, and a USB dongle is one more thing to carry. Stay Green is invisible, and it is smart: it only nudges the idle timer once you are actually idle, and auto-pauses when you have really left (so you are not shown as available at 2am).

Is it safe, and is it allowed?

Stay Green reads nothing, logs no keystrokes, and never looks at your screen. Everything stays on your Mac; the only things that leave are an update check and a license check. On the safety side it is about as minimal as a tool can be.

Whether to run it is your call: some workplaces have policies about activity simulation, so check yours if you are unsure. Stay Green is built for the honest case, not dropping to Away during a long build, a document read, a call, or a demo, and it pauses itself when you actually step away for the day.

Keep Slack, Zoom and Discord green too

Because Stay Green works at the system level, one nudge keeps every chat app active at the same time. See also: Keep Slack green on Mac and a mouse jiggler alternative for Mac.