Wednesday, January 23,2008 @ 3:00pm
Jolt defeats Mac OS X energy saver
Independent coder Bryan Hansen has released Jolt, a system utility for Mac OS X. The tool defeats a common problem for Mac owners, in which a user wants to keep the default timing for the energy saver, but is continually interrupted by it when watching videos or reading long documents. By clicking on the Jolt icon located in the Menu bar, users can temporarily delay screen dimming by several minutes. A timer within Jolt's own menu shows how long it will be before a system returns to normal.
The basic version of Jolt, Jolt Lite, is a free Universal Binary, but people can also opt to pay $5 for a complete version, which allows for five different delay settings. Timings can be set anywhere between three minutes and infinity, and each preset can be assigned its own color. Half of the app's price is furthermore being donated to charities, including the International Justice Mission and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.