Using the Idle Timer to Pause Rendering When You Walk Away

Sometimes you don't alt-tab — you just get up and leave. The game keeps running at full tilt while you're making coffee. Dynamic FPS has an inactivity timer for exactly this, and it's one of the most useful features to configure.

Configure the inactivity timer

1. Open the config and find the inactivity or idle timer setting.

2. A short timer saves power aggressively; a longer timer avoids throttling during cutscenes or when you're reading a quest log.

3. Set the frame rate the game should drop to once the timer expires. This is separate from the unfocused and invisible states, so you can be more or less aggressive here depending on your needs.

4. Make sure the timer resets on any input — mouse movement, keyboard, or controller. If it doesn't, you'll get stuttering while actively playing.

Combine it with the other states

The idle timer stacks with focus detection. A good setup is: full speed while focused and active, a moderate drop when focused but idle, a deeper drop when unfocused, and near-zero rendering when invisible. That ladder means the game only spends real resources when you're genuinely looking at and interacting with it. Test each tier by leaving the game alone and watching your frame rate counter.