Coolant

Coolant is a utility to suspend a game process, or any other program. It uses the existing SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals under the hood.

Currently Coolant supports X11 (excluding suspending the active window), Hyprland and Sway. Pull requests (e.g. for other Wayland window managers) welcome!

Hyprfreeze.mp4

Based on Zerodya/hyprfreeze.

Useful to:

• Pause single-player games that can't normally be paused (Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, ...)
• Pause cutscenes to read the subtitles or if you suddenly need to leave your desk
• Save system resources (excluding RAM) if you need them for another computer task, or if the game's pause menu uses too many

Caveats:

Some processes, especially games, might not react well to being suspended and resumed later. Be sure to save your progress/work before trying it!

Note: Running games in gamescope is highly recommended. (See Zerodya/hyprfreeze#1.)

Installation

Basher

Coolant is compatible with shell script package manager Basher.

basher install git.alternerd.tv/alterNERDtive/coolant

(Github mirror: basher install alterNERDtive/coolant.)

Manual

Clone this repo and symlink the coolant script to a directory in your PATH:

git clone https://git.alternerd.tv/alterNERDtive/coolant.git Coolant
ln -s $(pwd)/Coolant/coolant $HOME/.local/bin

Dependencies

• JQ to parse json
• pstree which is required to list child processes
• (Optional) xprop on X11, hyprprop on Hyprland or swayprop on Sway to get the pid of a window by selecting it with your mouse.
• (Optional) Systemd for detecting session type / desktop via loginctl.

Usage

Add a bind in your Hyprland or Sway config to pause the current active window:

# ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf
...
# Toggle freeze on active window
bind = , PAUSE, exec, coolant -a

Available flags

-h, --help              show help message

-a, --active            toggle suspend by active window
-p, --pid               toggle suspend by process id
-n, --name              toggle suspend by process name/command
-r, --prop              toggle suspend by clicking on window (requires xprop
                        / hyprprop / swayprop)

-s, --silent            don't send notification
-t, --notif-timeout     notification timeout in milliseconds (default 5000)
--info                  show information about the process
--dry-run               doesn't actually perform an action, useful with --info
--debug                 enable debug mode

Examples:

# Pause game by process name
coolant -n eldenring.exe

# Get info about a process by clicking on its window, without suspending it
coolant -r --info --dry-run