Awake Desk

A single-page utility dashboard that keeps your screen awake while showing weather, news, and a calm wallpaper suggestion. Built to run in a browser on any device — no build step, no framework, no client-side dependencies.

What it does

• Screen Wake Lock — Uses the browser's Screen Wake Lock API to prevent your display from sleeping. Best on Chromium browsers over HTTPS or localhost.
• Weather — 5-day local forecast via browser geolocation and Open-Meteo. Location names resolved with BigDataCloud reverse geocoding.
• News — Curated headlines from public, no-paywall sources via Google News RSS. Browse by category (technology, science, world, business, health, sports, entertainment, local) and language (10 languages supported). Local news intelligently sources from country-specific outlets.
• Wallpaper — Seeded, theme-matched desktop wallpaper suggestions from Lorem Picsum with notes on visual composition.
• Theming — Three themes (light, dark, mid) and four accent colors (green, blue, rose, amber). Preferences persist in localStorage.

Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Vanilla HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Server	Node.js http module (static files + API proxy)
Container	Docker (node:22-alpine)
External APIs	Open-Meteo, BigDataCloud, Google News RSS, Lorem Picsum

No build tools, no bundler, no npm packages in the client. The entire frontend is three files (~31 KB).

Running locally

With Node.js

node server.js

Defaults to port 80. Set PORT to override:

PORT=3000 node server.js

With Docker

docker compose up -d

Exposes the app on port 8787.

Environment variables

Variable	Default	Description
AUTH_USER	(none)	Basic auth username — if set with AUTH_PASS, enables auth
AUTH_PASS	(none)	Basic auth password — if set with AUTH_USER, enables auth
AUTH_REALM	Awake Desk	Basic auth realm name
TRUST_PROXY	false	Trust X-Forwarded-For header for rate-limiting IP detection. Set to true only when behind a trusted reverse proxy.
PORT	80	Server listen port

If AUTH_USER and AUTH_PASS are both set, the app requires Basic Auth. If either is missing, the app runs in public mode (no auth).

API endpoints

The Node.js server proxies three external APIs to avoid CORS issues in the browser:

Endpoint	Purpose	Upstream
GET /api/reverse-geocode?latitude=...&longitude=...	Location name from coordinates	BigDataCloud
GET /api/weather?latitude=...&longitude=...	5-day forecast	Open-Meteo
GET /api/news?category=...&language=...&city=...&country=...&countryCode=...	RSS headlines	Google News RSS

Static assets are served from the filesystem with correct MIME types and security headers (X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff, Referrer-Policy: no-referrer, X-Frame-Options: DENY, Content-Security-Policy).

Browser support

• Wake Lock: Chrome, Edge, Opera, and other Chromium-based browsers. Requires a secure context (HTTPS or localhost). Firefox and Safari do not support the API.
• Geolocation: All modern browsers; requires user permission.
• CSS: Uses modern features (color-mix, clamp, CSS custom properties) — any evergreen browser.

Project structure

.
├── index.html          # Single-page markup
├── styles.css          # Theme system, layout, components (~10 KB)
├── script.js           # Wake lock, weather, news, wallpaper logic (~12 KB)
├── server.js           # Node.js static server + API proxy (~6 KB)
├── Dockerfile          # Alpine Node image, single-stage
├── docker-compose.yml  # Service definition
├── nginx.conf          # Nginx config (for deployments using nginx instead of Node)
└── docs/               # Documentation and screenshots (not tracked)

Deployment notes

• The app is designed to be lightweight enough to run on a small VPS or home server behind a reverse proxy.
• nginx.conf is provided for deployments that prefer nginx static hosting over the Node.js server. In that case, the API proxy would need to be handled separately (e.g., via nginx proxy_pass rules) or omitted if CORS is not a concern.

License

MIT