Clamshell

Name: Clamshell
Rating: 4.0 (1 reviews)

Close your MacBook. Keep the work running.

4.0•1 review•

82 followers

Close your MacBook. Keep the work running.

4.0•1 review•

82 followers

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Clamshell is a Mac menu bar app for Apple Silicon MacBooks (macOS 14+) that keeps work running with the lid closed: no monitor, sudo or admin setup. Builds, downloads and coding agents like Claude Code and Codex keep going while the built-in display stays dark. Thermal safety is always on, and normal lid sleep comes back when you disarm. 7-day free trial, then $9.99 once for one Mac ($19.99 for three) at clamshell.dev, or with a Setapp membership.

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Launch tags:Mac•Productivity•Developer Tools

Launch Team

Clamshell

Maker

📌

Hey Product Hunt,

Clamshell started with a very ordinary annoyance. I would close my MacBook, leave a build, download, or coding agent running, and come back later to find that the whole thing had stopped.

I tried the usual workarounds. Some only prevent idle sleep. Others change a system-wide setting that is easy to forget. I wanted one small switch I could turn on only when I needed it.

So I built Clamshell. Arm it, close the lid, and your Mac keeps working while the internal display goes dark. Open it again and normal lid behavior comes back. You can arm it from the menu bar, with a shortcut, or by holding Option while closing the lid.

It checks itself again when power changes. I also added a low-battery cutoff because keeping a Mac awake is not very useful if it runs the battery flat.

Setapp gave me a reality check before this launch: more than 500 people are already using Clamshell, and so far I have had one bug report. That bug is fixed.

If you prefer the direct version, the trial lasts seven days and does not ask for a card. After that, it is $9.99 once.

If you run long builds, downloads, local servers, or coding agents, I would genuinely love to hear how it works on your MacBook.

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3mo ago

To answer your forum question: lid cracked open like an animal, which is exactly the problem. What I'd want next is the reverse trigger -arm it until a given process exits, so the Mac finishes the build and then actually sleeps, instead of staying awake in my bag/bed/ table until the battery cutoff catches it. Is there anything like that on the roadmap?

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2mo ago

Clamshell

Maker

That’s the main idea I’m exploring for 2.0: let a specific job finish, then return the Mac to normal sleep. The hard part is knowing it genuinely finished rather than guessing from a process disappearing. Which tool would you want this for first?

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2mo ago

@matyasrathonyi thanks for your answer. Definitely for the Claude app, either for code or cowork. Wish you all the best!

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2mo ago

Clamshell

Maker

@daylen_m That’s helpful, thanks. I had Claude and Codex in mind as the first two since they’re the two I see used most, including both their apps and CLIs. I think I’ll release it once I have a solid foundation for both instead of shipping one integration at a time.

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2mo ago

Capsomnia but paid 🙂

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2mo ago

Clamshell

Maker

Fair. I built Clamshell around the part I kept forgetting: making the override temporary and getting normal lid sleep back cleanly when I returned. The safety and recovery around that were what I didn’t want to manage by hand.

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2mo ago

Forum Threads

p/clamshell

•

2mo ago

The annoying difference between idle sleep and lid-close sleep on macOS

I kept seeing `caffeinate` suggested under long-running agent threads, so the short version is: it prevents idle sleep. Closing the lid uses a different macOS sleep path, which is why a build or agent can still stop the second you shut the MacBook.

If you only need to lock the screen or walk away with the lid open, `caffeinate -i` is enough. For closed-lid work, you need something that changes the lid behavior and, just as importantly, restores it afterwards. That distinction is what pushed me to build Clamshell.

Curious how other people handle long local agent jobs: leave the lid cracked, use cloud agents, or change the Mac s sleep behavior?

View all

Hey Product Hunt,

Clamshell started with a very ordinary annoyance. I would close my MacBook, leave a build, download, or coding agent running, and come back later to find that the whole thing had stopped.

I tried the usual workarounds. Some only prevent idle sleep. Others change a system-wide setting that is easy to forget. I wanted one small switch I could turn on only when I needed it.

It checks itself again when power changes. I also added a low-battery cutoff because keeping a Mac awake is not very useful if it runs the battery flat.

Setapp gave me a reality check before this launch: more than 500 people are already using Clamshell, and so far I have had one bug report. That bug is fixed.

If you prefer the direct version, the trial lasts seven days and does not ask for a card. After that, it is $9.99 once.

If you run long builds, downloads, local servers, or coding agents, I would genuinely love to hear how it works on your MacBook.

Clamshell

Close your MacBook. Keep the work running.

Close your MacBook. Keep the work running.

Forum Threads

The annoying difference between idle sleep and lid-close sleep on macOS

Forum Threads

The annoying difference between idle sleep and lid-close sleep on macOS

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What's great

What needs improvement

vs Alternatives