Warden

Windows system-tray app that kills background processes and stops services when you game, then restores everything when you're done.

What it does

• Enable — kills configured processes, stops Windows services, shuts down WSL, switches to High Performance power plan
• Disable — starts services back up, returns to Balanced power plan
• Tray-first — left-click to open the portal, right-click for the menu (toggle gaming mode, Start with Windows, quit)
• Manage Services — toggle, add, edit, or delete entries from the UI; fuzzy-search picker auto-fills from your live Windows service list
• Start with Windows — toggleable from the tray menu; the MSI installer enables it by default

Installation

Download warden.msi from Releases for a guided install (sets up Program Files, Start Menu shortcut, and autostart). Or grab the standalone warden.exe and run it directly — configuration is saved to config.json next to the binary.

Default managed items: Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, Jellyfin, Deluge, Docker Desktop (processes) and Windows Search, SysMain, Windows Update, DiagTrack, OneDrive Sync, Docker Service, WSL (services).

Building

Requires Go 1.24+, mingw-w64, and msitools (sudo apt install msitools) for cross-compilation from Linux/WSL.

make build-windows   # produces warden.exe
make build-msi       # produces warden-<version>.msi
make deploy          # build + copy warden.exe to %USERPROFILE%\Documents
make test