Guide

Mouse jiggler for Mac

macOS will dim the display, start a screensaver, and eventually lock based on Energy settings. Desktop Slack and Microsoft Teams add their own idle clocks. A mouse jiggler for Mac is a small utility that creates genuine pointer activity so those clocks do not fire while you are reading, waiting on an export, or presenting.

TinyNudge for Mac is a menu-bar app. It offsets the real cursor a few pixels and returns it, then holds a display-sleep assertion while it is running. Default interval is 30 seconds (15 / 30 / 60). One build covers Apple Silicon and Intel. It requires macOS 13 or later. The app is free. Download the disk image from the Mac app page.

Install

Open the disk image and drag TinyNudge into Applications.
First launch: if macOS says Apple could not verify the app, click Done, then double-click Open TinyNudge.command on the disk, or run xattr -cr /Applications/TinyNudge.app and right-click the app → Open. If the disk image will not open, download the ZIP from the same page.
Grant Accessibility: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → TinyNudge. Without that permission, macOS will not let any app move the pointer.
Click Start. The window shows a countdown to the next nudge.

What it will not do

A closed MacBook lid still sleeps unless you are in Apple’s supported clamshell setup (external display, keyboard, and power). No software jiggler overrides that. The app also does not click, type, or talk to Slack’s API. It only nudges the pointer.

Website versus Mac app

The online mouse jiggler is the right first step when you only need the panel awake and you cannot install software. Switch to the Mac app when desktop chat still goes idle, or when you want the nudge to continue without keeping a browser tab in the foreground.

Compared with a USB mouse jiggler, the Mac app uses no port and no coin cell. Compared with random “free Mac mouse jiggler” downloads, prefer a small, permission-explicit binary over an unknown installer.

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