# ryanries/UniversalPauseButton

A pause button that pauses the unpausable. Handy for video game cut scenes especially, but can be used for any application, not just games.

Repository: https://github.com/ryanries/UniversalPauseButton
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/universalpausebutton
Language: C
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2025-03-16T15:38:27+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 28/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 11, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4104, "days_push": 535, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1014, forks 43 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:13.843601+00:00)

## What it is
A small Windows system-tray utility that pauses and unpauses the foreground application (or a named process) when you press the Pause/Break key, even during unpausable game cutscenes. Written in C and rewritten in 2023 with registry-configurable options.

## Use cases
- pause unpausable video game cutscenes
- pause any windows application with the pause key
- temporarily freeze a game to talk to someone
- pause a specific process by name
- freeze single-player games mid-cutscene

## When to choose
- you play single-player games on Windows and want a universal pause hotkey
- you need to freeze any foreground Windows app instantly
- you want a lightweight, free, open-source tray utility

## When to avoid
- you play multiplayer games, where pausing will get you kicked
- you are not on Windows
- you need guaranteed safe pausing of arbitrary processes, since some apps may misbehave when suspended

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: desktop-framework, developer-tools
- domain: gaming-tools, windows, desktop-applications
- platform: windows
- tags: pause-key, system-tray, process-pause, cutscene-pause, single-player-games, desktop

## Member repositories
- ryanries/UniversalPauseButton (main) score 28

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.843601+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:11:35.415113+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ryanries/UniversalPauseButton (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.843601+00:00, sha d575e0768b5f)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.