dsh-pet-game-guard

dsh-pet-game-guard

Hides your dsh-pet windows while you are playing a game, and puts them back when you are done.

Windows only. Requires dsh-pet to be installed and visible (any display value: desktop, web or both).

• While a game or a fullscreen app is in the foreground, the pet's windows are hidden with ShowWindow.
• When you return to the desktop, the same windows are shown again, still on top and without stealing focus.
• Nothing in dsh-pet's own configuration is modified, and the pet process keeps running: it just is not visible.
• A tray icon ("宠物游戏守卫" / Pet Game Guard) lets you pause the guard, show the pet immediately, reload the config or quit.

Install

dsh plugin --profile web add dsh-pet-game-guard

Use your own profile name if the host is not web:

dsh plugin --profile desktop add dsh-pet-game-guard

Restart the host once. Nothing else is needed: the plugin unpacks its helper binary and starts it with DSH, and stops it when DSH exits.

Local development:

dsh plugin --profile web add link:/absolute/path/to/dsh-pet-game-guard

What it decides from

A tick every 350 ms, three signals, with a debounce of 2 consecutive identical ticks:

1. Fullscreen window — the foreground window covers the whole monitor and has no caption (WS_CAPTION). Maximised windows are excluded, because they keep the caption or leave the taskbar gap.
2. Game process — the foreground executable lives in a game directory. Steam libraries are read from the registry plus libraryfolders.vdf, steamapps\common is added, and the usual Epic / Xbox / GOG / Riot / WeGame folders are appended. extra_game_dirs and extra_game_exes extend this by hand.
3. Ignored processes — ignore_processes is checked first, so a fullscreen DeepSeek Harness window never hides the pet.

Hiding is done by window title prefix (dsh-pet) and class (Chrome_WidgetWin_1), so it works for every pet in display: desktop and display: both without knowing their ids.

Files

The helper is installed to %LOCALAPPDATA%\PetGuard:

File · Purpose PetGuard.exe · the helper; replaced on plugin update config.ini · settings; created once, then never overwritten petguard.log · written only when debug_log=1, rotated at 512 KiB selftest.txt · output of the command line modes below

The helper must live outside the DSH workspace: a process started from a directory with a low integrity label has no permission to call ShowWindow on the pet's windows and fails with err=5.

config.ini

Key · Default · Meaning enabled · 1 · 0 disables the guard entirely (pet always visible) poll_ms · 350 · detection interval in milliseconds hide_after · 2 · consecutive "in game" ticks before hiding show_after · 2 · consecutive "not in game" ticks before showing hide_when_fullscreen · 1 · hide when a fullscreen window is in front hide_when_game_process · 1 · hide when the foreground process is a game scan_steam_libraries · 1 · scan Steam libraries automatically rescan_minutes · 5 · how often the game directory list is rebuilt debug_log · 1 · write petguard.log ignore_processes · explorer.exe,DeepSeek Harness.exe · never hide when these are in front (comma separated, exe names) extra_game_dirs · *(empty)* · extra game directories, whole subtree (comma separated) extra_game_exes · *(empty)* · extra game executable names (comma separated)

After editing, right-click the tray icon and choose 重新加载配置 (Reload config).

Command line

PetGuard.exe --once     # print one detection result to selftest.txt
PetGuard.exe --dirs     # print the scanned game directories and extra exe names
PetGuard.exe --list     # list the pet windows it can see
PetGuard.exe --hide     # hide the pet now
PetGuard.exe --restore  # show the pet now
PetGuard.exe --status   # print the current status
PetGuard.exe --quit     # ask a running instance to exit (restores the pet first)

Limitations

• Windows only; the helper is a .NET Framework 4 executable compiled from assets/PetGuard.cs.
• It hides windows, it does not stop the pet: dsh-pet's own automatic whispering keeps calling the model on its usual schedule. Turn whisperEnabled off in the pet's config if that matters to you.
• A borderless fullscreen video (for example YouTube in fullscreen) also counts as fullscreen and hides the pet. Raise hide_when_fullscreen=0 if you only want games.
• The guard runs while DSH runs. When DSH exits, it exits too.

Changelog

• 0.1.2 — Fix the tray icon silently disappearing: listen for the TaskbarCreated broadcast (re-register after Explorer restarts) and re-register once 20 s after startup to survive a boot race with Explorer.
• 0.1.1 — Recover when the guard is killed externally; no longer kills a user-run instance on uninstall or host exit.
• 0.1.0 — First release.

License

MIT