
The platform profile lives in /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile. The desiredprof and defaultprof options correspond to the values for the platform profile set when gamescope begins and ends, respectively. HACK: The platform profile may restrict what values the governor can take, so we choose to set the governor before the platform profile in order to store the correct default governor, and restore the platform profile before the governor. This is done to maximize correctness after restoration, but it can cause issues if the previous platform profile restricts the governor. TODO: Save all the state we care about before any of it is changed. In thsi case, we should set (and restore) the platform profile before the governor.
GameMode
GameMode is a daemon/lib combo for Linux that allows games to request a set of optimisations be temporarily applied to the host OS and/or a game process.
GameMode was designed primarily as a stop-gap solution to problems with the Intel and AMD CPU powersave or ondemand governors, but is now host to a range of optimisation features and configurations.
Currently GameMode includes support for optimisations including:
- CPU governor
- I/O priority
- Process niceness
- Kernel scheduler (
SCHED_ISO
) - Screensaver inhibiting
- GPU performance mode (NVIDIA and AMD), GPU overclocking (NVIDIA)
- CPU core pinning or parking
- Custom scripts
GameMode packages are available for Ubuntu, Debian, Solus, Arch, Gentoo, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Mageia and possibly more.
Issues with GameMode should be reported here in the issues section, and not reported to Feral directly.
Requesting GameMode
For games/launchers which integrate GameMode support (see list later on), simply running the game will automatically activate GameMode.
For others, you must manually request GameMode when running the game. This can be done by launching the game through gamemoderun
:
gamemoderun ./game
Or edit the Steam launch options:
gamemoderun %command%
Note: for older versions of GameMode (before 1.3) use this string in place of gamemoderun
:
LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/\$LIB/libgamemodeauto.so.0"
Please note the backslash here in \$LIB
is required.
Configuration
The daemon is configured with a gamemode.ini
file. example/gamemode.ini is an example of what this file would look like, with explanations for all the variables.
Configuration files are loaded and merged from the following directories, from highest to lowest priority:
$PWD
("unsafe" -[gpu]
settings take no effect in this file)$XDG_CONFIG_HOME
or$HOME/.config/
("unsafe" -[gpu]
settings take no effect in this file)/etc/
/usr/share/gamemode/
Note for Hybrid GPU users
It's not possible to integrate commands like optirun automatically inside GameMode, since the GameMode request is made once the game has already started. However it is possible to use a hybrid GPU wrapper like optirun by starting the game with gamemoderun
.
You can do this by setting the environment variable GAMEMODERUNEXEC
to your wrapper's launch command, so for example GAMEMODERUNEXEC=optirun
, GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env DRI_PRIME=1"
, or GAMEMODERUNEXEC="env __NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia __VK_LAYER_NV_optimus=NVIDIA_only"
. This environment variable can be set globally (e.g. in /etc/environment), so that the same prefix command does not have to be duplicated everywhere you want to use gamemoderun
.
GameMode will not be injected to the wrapper.
Development 
The design of GameMode has a clear-cut abstraction between the host daemon and library (gamemoded
and libgamemode
), and the client loaders (libgamemodeauto
and gamemode_client.h
) that allows for safe use without worrying about whether the daemon is installed or running. This design also means that while the host library currently relies on systemd
for exchanging messages with the daemon, it's entirely possible to implement other internals that still work with the same clients.
See repository subdirectories for information on each component.
Install Dependencies
GameMode depends on meson
for building and systemd
for internal communication. This repo contains a bootstrap.sh
script to allow for quick install to the user bus, but check meson_options.txt
for custom settings.
Ubuntu/Debian (you may also need dbus-user-session
)
apt install meson libsystemd-dev pkg-config ninja-build git libdbus-1-dev libinih-dev build-essential
On Ubuntu 18.04, you'll need to install python3
package and install the latest meson version from pip
.
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install meson
Later you can deactivate the virtual environment and remove it.
deactivate
rm -rf .venv
Arch
pacman -S meson systemd git dbus libinih
Fedora
dnf install meson systemd-devel pkg-config git dbus-devel
Gentoo
Gentoo has an ebuild which builds a stable release from sources. It will also pull in all the dependencies so you can work on the source code.
emerge --ask games-util/gamemode
You can also install using the latest sources from git:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="**" emerge --ask ~games-util/gamemode-9999
Build and Install GameMode
Then clone, build and install a release version of GameMode at 1.8.2:
git clone https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode.git
cd gamemode
git checkout 1.8.2 # omit to build the master branch
./bootstrap.sh
To test GameMode installed and will run correctly:
gamemoded -t
To uninstall:
systemctl --user stop gamemoded.service
ninja uninstall -C builddir
Pull Requests
Pull requests must match with the coding style found in the .clang-format
file, please run this before committing:
clang-format -i $(find . -name '*.[ch]' -not -path "*subprojects/*")
Maintained by
Feral Interactive
See the contributors section for an extended list of contributors.
License
Copyright © 2017-2025 Feral Interactive and the GameMode contributors
GameMode is available under the terms of the BSD 3-Clause License (Revised)
The "inih" library is distributed under the New BSD license