UE4 Editor preventing PC sleeping

Development Audio
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1

Hi all,

I’ve noticed that if i leave UE4 Editor open my PC will never sleep. This is bad for the environment and bad for my electricity bill, and lowers the life expectancy of my PC parts.

I’ve done some investigating and found that this happens with all UE4 editor versions between at least 4.8 and 4.17, it seems that while the editor is open it opens an audio stream for the editor sounds (even if editor sounds are disabled!) and doesn’t close it until the editor closes. There seems to be no way to disable this functionality.

This causes the sound driver to request a sleep override within windows’s power management system:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /requests
DISPLAY:
None.

SYSTEM:
[DRIVER] VIA HD Audio (HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1106&DEV_0441&SUBSYS_1458A014&REV_1001\4&305c0d3e&0&0001)
An audio stream is currently in use.

AWAYMODE:
None.

EXECUTION:
None.

PERFBOOST:
None.

ACTIVELOCKSCREEN:
None.

I’ve managed to work around this for now by adding a request override for the sound driver, but this means of course that the PC might go to sleep if i’m watching movies etc.

Is there a better fix without modding UE4?

Thanks!

2

+1. This happens to me also on the latest 4.17.0. In addition to the audio request you have mentioned, I also have this: [DRIVER] Legacy Kernel Caller

3

Would love a solution to this also, Epic staff?

4

Still happening in 5.0.3. Interesting how this is obviously not a priority.

5

Also having this problem in 5.1

6

This is also in 5.4.4

It seems there is absolutely no care in regards to the amount of electricity that is being wasted and the environment impact.

7

Unfortunately still an issue with 5.5.4, the version I am using right now, 2 years after the last response to this thread but I found a workaround which seems to work quite nicely on my end:

  1. Keep your default audio device as is but enable one of the extra virtual audio devices
  2. Route the UE sound to the virtual audio output device in Windows
  3. Add the request override for the virtual audio sound driver as OP suggested

This way UE is not blocking sleep mode anymore but everything related to your normal sound, like watching movies etc, keeps the PC awake as intended (keep in mind you have to unwind this setup if you actually need sound in the engine but just for coding it should be fine).