Put the game you're playing to sleep with one key, and wake it up with the same key.
While asleep it uses no CPU or GPU, yet stays in memory exactly where you left it.
- Download
GameSuspend.exefrom Releases and put it in a folder of its own. No installation needed. - Run it. The settings window opens on the first start; a blue icon appears next to the clock.
- In a game, press Pause: the game window minimizes and the game goes to sleep. The icon turns into a moon.
- Press Pause again: the game wakes up and its window comes back.
| Hotkey | Action |
|---|---|
Pause |
suspend the foreground game / resume the suspended game |
Ctrl+Alt+Pause |
emergency resume of the last suspended game |
Right-click the icon for Settings…, History… and Exit. Double-clicking the icon resumes a suspended game, otherwise it opens the settings. Exiting GameSuspend, signing out or shutting down always wakes a suspended game first.
- Hotkeys – click a field and press any key combination (Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Win work).
- Minimize the game window before suspending – frees the screen; recommended for fullscreen games.
- Start GameSuspend when I sign in to Windows – no need to touch the Startup folder.
- Never suspend these programs – e.g.
discord, obs64;.exeis added automatically. - Advanced – delays between minimizing/suspending and resuming/restoring. Raise them if a game stutters after waking up.
Settings are stored in settings.ini next to the exe, the history in gamesuspend.log.
GameSuspend calls NtSuspendProcess / NtResumeProcess from ntdll on the process that owns
the foreground window. The order matters:
- suspend: minimize window → wait → suspend process
- resume: resume process → wait → restore window
A suspended process can't respond to window messages, so the window is minimized while the game still runs and restored only after it runs again.
System processes (explorer.exe, dwm.exe, csrss.exe, winlogon.exe, …), AutoHotkey and
GameSuspend itself can never be suspended, whatever the settings say.
- "access denied" – the game runs as administrator or is protected by anti-cheat. Try running GameSuspend as administrator. Games with kernel anti-cheat can't be suspended.
- Online games usually lose their server connection while suspended.
- A hotkey does nothing – another app already uses it; GameSuspend tells you and opens the settings. Pick a different one.
- A game stayed frozen – press the emergency hotkey. History… shows what happened.
cargo build --release # target/release/gamesuspend.exe
cargo testThe window layouts are in assets/dialogs.rc. The icons in assets/ are generated by
python assets/make_icons.py (needs Pillow).
Pushing a tag that matches the version in Cargo.toml builds and publishes a release:
git tag v1.1.0
git push origin v1.1.0