Agents Never Sleep vs Quartz: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Agents Never Sleep and Quartz — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Agents Never Sleep
Agents Never Sleep
A tiny $4.99 Mac menu bar app that keeps long-running AI agents alive with the laptop lid closed, using one three-level slider.
Key features
- Closed-Lid Operation: Keeps agents and background jobs running with the MacBook lid shut, which the built-in caffeinate command cannot do.
- Three-Level Slider: One control with Sleepy, Awake, and Never sleeps settings, so changing sleep behavior takes a single drag rather than a terminal command.
- Menu Bar Only: Lives entirely in the menu bar with no window, dock icon, or configuration screens to manage.
- Native and Tiny: A small native macOS binary rather than a wrapped web app, minimizing overhead on a machine already running agents.
- Zero Data Collection: No telemetry, analytics, or tracking; what runs on the machine stays on the machine.
- Safe Revert: Toggling back down restores normal sleep behavior, avoiding the common mistake of leaving sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1 permanently enabled.
- No-Questions Refund: A 14-day money-back guarantee with no form to fill in and no reason required.
Best for
- Overnight Agent Runs: Letting a coding agent work through a long task while the laptop is closed and put away.
- Long Builds and Tests: Preventing a multi-hour build, test suite, or data job from being interrupted mid-run by sleep.
- Mobile Working: Carrying a MacBook between rooms or offices without propping the lid open to keep a job alive.
- Model Downloads and Training: Keeping large model downloads or local fine-tuning runs going unattended.
- Avoiding pmset Mistakes: Replacing manual sudo pmset toggles that are easy to enable and easy to forget to undo.
- Remote Sessions: Keeping a Mac reachable and working for a remote session or background service while it sits closed on a desk.
Quartz
datarockets
AI-native email client for Mac that sorts your inbox and drafts replies in your voice, running entirely on-device.
Key features
- On-Device AI: Inbox sorting and reply drafting run locally on Apple Silicon, so email is never sent to external AI providers.
- Importance-Based Triage: Auto-categorizes every message by importance you define and the system learns over time, surfacing what matters and collapsing FYI, Icebox, and Noise.
- Voice-Matched Drafts: Learns your writing style, sender relationship, and thread context to draft replies that sound like you rather than a template.
- Local Encryption: Mail is encrypted on your device with keys only you hold, and the company has no servers that can read it.
- Gmail Integration: Connects to Gmail accounts and has been independently audited under Google's Cloud Application Security Assessment.
Best for
- Inbox Overload: Professionals who get high message volume let Quartz triage by importance so they focus only on mail that needs attention.
- Privacy-Sensitive Email: Users who handle confidential correspondence keep AI processing fully on-device instead of uploading mail to cloud AI services.
- Faster Replies: Drafting routine responses in the user's own voice to cut time spent writing repetitive email.
- Mac-First Workflow: Apple Silicon users who want a native, local-first email experience rather than a web client.