OBS Freeze Filter hotkeys not working specifically with Minecraft (Wayland/KDE)

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pheinz

New Member
Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some help regarding an OBS setup on my CachyOS installation. My goal is to be able to “freeze” my Minecraft livestream (via a hotkey) so that viewers see a static image while I perform other tasks on my laptop, and then “unfreeze” it to return to the live gameplay.

The Problem: I have installed obs-freeze-filter from the AUR. The plugin works perfectly for almost every window/source I test it with. However, when I try to use it with Minecraft (launched via Prism Launcher), the hotkeys simply do not trigger the freeze. It seems like the hotkey events aren’t being picked up by OBS when the Minecraft window has focus.

System Environment:
  • OS: CachyOS x86_64
  • Kernel: Linux 6.19.11-1-cachyos
  • DE: KDE Plasma 6.6.4 (Wayland)
  • Hardware: ThinkPad T480 (i7-8650U / Intel UHD 620)
  • Shell: fish 4.6.0
  • Launcher: Prism Launcher (Minecraft)

What I’ve tried:
  1. Testing the obs-freeze-filter on other windows (browsers, terminal, etc.) — Works.
  2. Assigning different hotkey combinations to ensure no conflicts — No change.
  3. Running Minecraft in both Windowed and Fullscreen modes — No change.
Since I am running on Wayland/KWin, I suspect this might be an issue with how global hotkeys are being handled when a Java/GLFW application like Minecraft has focus, or perhaps an issue with the filter plugin’s interaction with the Wayland capture pipeline.

Has anyone managed to get hotkey-based freezing to work reliably with Minecraft on a similar setup? Are there alternative methods (perhaps a specific script or a different OBS plugin) that play nicer with Wayland and KDE?

My goal is to have the stream image stay frozen while I, for example, continue playing Minecraft without the viewers seeing it.

Any help or insights would be greatly appreciated!
 
Yeah this smells like a Wayland limitation more than anything else. From what I’ve run into, global hotkeys in OBS can get blocked when a focused app like Minecraft (especially via GLFW/Java) grabs input exclusively, so OBS just never sees the keypress even though the plugin itself is fine.


One workaround that actually worked for me was avoiding the freeze filter entirely and instead duplicating the scene, then adding a screenshot or “image source” of your game and toggling scenes with a hotkey or even a KDE global shortcut. That way you’re not relying on OBS catching input while Minecraft is focused. Another option is binding the hotkey at the KDE level instead of inside OBS, since KWin can sometimes pass it through better.


If you really want the plugin route, running OBS under XWayland or even a full X11 session can fix it, but yeah on pure Wayland this kind of thing is still a bit hit or miss.
 
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