Inhibit screensaver/lock while an AI CLI session is active

[JoeJoeflyn]

When working with AI coding assistants in the terminal (claude, devin, codex, gemini, aider), the screensaver and lock still fire on their normal idle timers. Long-running agent tasks get interrupted by the screensaver/lock, which is annoying since the user is actively engaged even though there is no keyboard/mouse input.

I have a local workaround that works well and I would like to upstream it. The approach:

1. A small helper script that returns 0 when any AI CLI is running, 1 otherwise. It matches by pgrep -x for short process names and pgrep -fE for path fragments to catch node/wrapper invocations:

   • claude, devin, codex, gemini, aider
   • claude-code/bin/claude, @openai/codex, @google/gemini-cli, /devin/cli

2. config/hypr/hypridle.conf guards both listeners:

   on-timeout = omarchy-cmd-ai-cli-running || (pidof hyprlock || omarchy-launch-screensaver)
   ...
   on-timeout = omarchy-cmd-ai-cli-running || omarchy-system-lock
   

Because omarchy-system-lock is what turns off the keyboard backlight (via omarchy-brightness-keyboard off), guarding the lock listener also keeps the keyboard backlight on during AI sessions — no separate listener needed.

I would contribute this as a PR with:

• bin/omarchy-cmd-ai-cli-running (following the cmd- prefix convention)
• Updated config/hypr/hypridle.conf
• A migration to apply the new config to existing installs

One concern: I noticed the omarchy-shell/omarchy-4 branches are moving idle management from hypridle to a Quickshell-based IdleService. If that is the direction, I am happy to implement the AI-CLI guard there instead (or in addition) so it survives the v4 transition.

Thoughts? Happy to open a PR either way.

[levyvix]

Suggestion: Waybar's built-in idle_inhibitor module

You don't necessarily need a custom hypridle script for this — Waybar ships a native idle_inhibitor module that toggles Wayland's idle-inhibit protocol, which hypridle already respects. One click and the screensaver/lock is paused until you toggle it back. It's a manual toggle rather than auto-detecting AI CLIs, but it's zero extra dependencies and works today.

Setup (it's built into Waybar, nothing to install):

1. Add the module to one of your module arrays in ~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc:

"modules-right": [
  "idle_inhibitor",
  // ...your other modules
],

2. Define the module:

"idle_inhibitor": {
  "format": "{icon}",
  "format-icons": {
    "activated": "󰛊",
    "deactivated": "󰾪"
  },
  "tooltip-format-activated": "Idle inhibitor: on",
  "tooltip-format-deactivated": "Idle inhibitor: off"
}

3. Reload Waybar (omarchy-restart-waybar, or killall -SIGUSR2 waybar).

Now just click the icon before kicking off a long-running agent task. Since it uses the standard Wayland inhibit protocol, hypridle won't fire while it's active — no config changes to hypridle and no migration needed.

If you'd rather it be automatic (detecting Claude/Codex/Gemini/etc.), the script-based hypridle approach in this thread is the way to go — but for a lot of people the one-click toggle is enough.

[JoeJoeflyn]

Thanks! I didn't know Waybar had a built-in idle_inhibitor module. That's a great suggestion and a much simpler option. Appreciate it!