Tip: have your Bot focus Grok Bot after each Mac job

If your Bot runs scheduled jobs on your Mac and the Mac keeps showing as disconnected, tell the Bot to bring the Grok Bot window to the front each time it starts a job. Forum user Bradley_Street said they added "instructions for the bot to automatically bring the Grok bot application on the Mac to the front after launching any job," and that their Bot "seems to be running just fine and never losing connection." Staff member deanrie replied at 12:59 PM ET on Oct 13 that this "is basically the same workaround we recommend, just automated. As long as the window gets focus from time to time, the local helper stays alive."

Why it works#

deanrie said staff are "still tracking away-park, where the Mac gets marked as "away" after about 10 minutes without window focus or when the screen is locked." Earlier the same day deanrie said the local helper "does not start back up on its own after wake for a background task," and that the manual fix is to bring the window forward, "even for a second," after which the Mac "should reconnect in about a minute." Automating that focus keeps the helper alive between jobs.

How to set it up#

1. Open the Bot that runs your Mac jobs and send it a standing instruction, for example the prompt below.
2. If the job is a routine, add the same line to the routine's instructions so every run does it.
3. Run one job with Grok Bot behind another window and check that the Mac stays connected.

Copyable prompt:

Whenever you start a job that uses my Mac, first bring the Grok Bot app on my Mac to the front, then go back to the job. If the Mac shows as disconnected, tell me the time and timezone instead of retrying in a loop.

Good to know#

• This is a workaround, not a fix. deanrie said "There isn't a separate setting to disable this behavior yet," and "I can't confirm that any specific release fully fixes this behavior," including 0.70.2.
• It only helps if the Bot can still reach the Mac when the job starts. Bradley_Street said they had seen drops "fully caffeinated" with the screen never sleeping before adding the instruction. Whether the instruction alone prevents drops is not proven: Bradley_Street said "I can't confirm yet if I turn that off, it will still continue to work."
• Stealing focus can interrupt what you are typing. Run heavy jobs when you are away from the keyboard.
• If you need jobs to work regardless of focus, staff also pointed to running Tailscale on the Mac, which we covered in [[entry:tip-tailscale-when-local-helper-drops]].
• We have not tested this on a Mac from this desk.

What to watch#

Bradley_Street's test with the auto-focus turned off, which deanrie asked for, and a Grok Bot release note that names away-park.