... if you have an external keyboard and mouse/trackpad ...
Its the best solution, in my opinion, for MacBooks since you avoid the touchbar and keyboard variances and stick with consistent tools you can build muscle memory with. There are so many options out there too. OP could also just buy a USB KVM switch (sounds like their familiarity is with Windows) and use the same keyboard/mouse from desktop.
This is how to do it: https://www.lifewire.com/prevent-macbook-from-sleeping-when-...
- You need to be plugged into the power.
- got to battery settings.
- power adapter
- set display off to never (far right option on the slider)
- tick 'prevent your mac from automatically sleeping when the display is off.
It's a bit convoluted but it works.
Instead of setting display to never you can use a tray utility to manage that, in the past caffeine was the goto app for this. With mac M1 I am using owly but I'm not sure why it was just the first thing I installed on my fresh machine. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/owly-prevent-display-sleep/id8...