Wouter Weynants - Viewport Realtime Idle Pause

Distribution Product Discussion
1

Cut fan noise, heat, and power draw by auto-pausing Realtime in inactive editor viewports. Then, instantly resume on interaction.
Save money on energy over long sessions and be a little kinder to the planet.

[Showcase Video] | [Documentation] | [Join the Discord]

Features

✅ Idle-aware Realtime — Pauses when a viewport is idle; resumes on viewport interaction.
✅ Per-viewport or Active-only — Track each viewport independently, or pause unused viewports while you focus.
✅ Focus-aware — Optional instant pause when the editor loses OS focus.
✅ Toolbar control — Level Viewport → Performance & Scalability → Enable Auto Pause + Idle After (seconds).
✅ No runtime impact — Doesn’t affect packaged builds or your render settings.
✅ Lightweight — Simple, predictable behavior that fits any workflow.

Use Cases

  • Hot days — Keep your room cooler by not turning your PC into a space heater (seriously).

  • Laptops — Keep temps and noise down; reduce power usage during long work days.

  • Working in a separate editor window — Tweak a Material , Static Mesh, etc while other viewports rest.

  • Context switching — Jump to IDE/email/browser; viewports pause until you’re back.

Quickstart

  1. Enable: Edit → Plugins → Viewport Realtime Idle Pause → Restart.

  2. Configure: Edit → Editor Preferences → Plugins → Viewport Realtime Idle Pause

    • IdleTimeSeconds (recommended: 2–3s)

    • bPauseOnEditorUnfocused (optional)

    • bPauseInactiveViewports (optional)

  3. Toggle fast: Level Viewport → Performance & Scalability → Enable Auto Pause and adjust Idle After (seconds).

  4. Test: Stop interacting to see Realtime pause; move the mouse/camera to resume; switch apps to test focus-pause.

Notes: Applies to editor viewports. Does not alter your quality settings—only the Realtime flag.

2

This is actually a great quality of life plugin. Nothing makes me want to close the editor faster than excessive fan noise when I switch to another program and this little gem solves that. Thank you!

1 Like
3

This is exactly why I make these tiny tools, thank you for the kind words!

4

planning to move to UE5.7 but this one is still missing. any change you can compile it for 5.7 and add it to fab?

5

This is a great plugin, thank you! But I had a few things I wanted to point out if maybe it could be improved. I’m using 5.6 if that helps.

- When auto-pause is enabled, animations won’t play in the retargeter window. Disabling the auto-pause fixes it, but it would be nice if this could be addressed

- It would be nice if you could toggle the auto-pause feature per viewport or viewport type. Like I like the functionality for my asset windows (static mesh, materials, etc), but I’d like my level viewport to stay non-realtime when I’m flying through it if I don’t need to observe anything moving. Currently, you have to disable the auto-pause feature to do that, but when you do, it turns it off for all the viewports. It looks like it’s advertised per viewport, but I can’t see that functionality, they all behave together.

I just got it, so this is just my first impressions. I’ll let you know if I run into anything else. I hope this helps, and thank you!