I'm developing a macOS SwiftUI app that is listening for events of a smart home device on the local network using server-sent events (SSE). The problem is that the computer goes to sleep once the user leaves it, and then my app is also put to sleep/suspended (unsure about the correct terminology here)

The whole point is to catch the events and analyze them for the user over time, for example over night. The events are triggered by the device using SSE, hence there is no polling or similar the app can do to catch up. It needs to continue listen over the network.

How do I achieve this?

(technically it should be possible, as there are apps like Caffeinated, Owly and Amphetamine. Not to mention that while you watch a movie then the laptop is not going to sleep)

I've search and found some examples, but I haven't managed to get any of them work and they seem quite outdated (or I just don't understand how to get them to work with a Swift/SwiftUI app)

Thanks in advance!

Well, I guess it is the implicit rubberducking of putting down the problem in a message 🙂 - I got a solution working that I just verified by having the app running overnight.

// NoSleep.swift

import Foundation
import IOKit.pwr_mgt

struct NoSleep {
    private static var assertionID: IOPMAssertionID = 0
    private static var success: IOReturn?

    static func disableSleep() -> Bool? {
         guard success == nil else { return nil }
         success = IOPMAssertionCreateWithName( kIOPMAssertionTypeNoDisplaySleep as CFString,
                                                IOPMAssertionLevel(kIOPMAssertionLevelOn),
                                                "String with reason for preventing sleep" as CFString,
                                                &assertionID )
         return success == kIOReturnSuccess
     }

    static func enableSleep() -> Bool {
        if success != nil {
            success = IOPMAssertionRelease(assertionID)
            success = nil
            return true
        }
        return false
    }
}

I invoke this in .onAppear() in the main content view using NoSleep.disableSleep().

Worth noting, the application does not show up in Activity Monitor under the Energy tab (where the Preventing Sleep column is), which I expected it to.