A tiny Windows system tray utility that keeps your Xbox wireless headset from going to sleep by continuously playing an inaudible tone.
Xbox wireless headsets (and many other USB/wireless gaming headsets) automatically power off or disconnect after a short period of audio silence. This is annoying when you're in a voice chat that goes quiet, watching a video with long silent stretches, or simply have the headset on while doing something else.
Pacemaker loops a 1 Hz sine wave at 1% volume — below the threshold of human hearing at normal listening levels, but enough to keep the headset's audio session alive indefinitely.
- Sits silently in the system tray
- Green icon when active, black icon when inactive
- Right-click menu: Activate / Deactivate / Exit
- Starts active by default
- Single self-contained
.exe— no installer, no dependencies, no files left behind
Grab the latest pacemaker.exe from Releases.
Just run pacemaker.exe. It will appear in your system tray and immediately start keeping your headset alive.
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Stop the tone | Right-click tray icon → Deactivate |
| Resume | Right-click tray icon → Activate |
| Quit | Right-click tray icon → Exit |
To have it start with Windows, place a shortcut to pacemaker.exe in your Startup folder (Win + R → shell:startup).
Requirements: Windows with .NET Framework 4.x (built into every modern Windows installation — no SDK needed).
build.batOutput lands in dist\pacemaker.exe — a single ~9.5 KB executable. No NuGet, no project file, no build system.
build.bat generates the intermediate pacemaker.ico from icon.png on the fly and deletes it after compilation.
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
pacemaker.cs |
Full source (single file) |
icon.png |
White Xbox logo — embedded into the exe at compile time |
build.bat |
Generates the ICO, compiles, outputs dist\pacemaker.exe |
Only icon.png is a binary source file. The resulting pacemaker.exe is fully self-contained.
- Audio: Generates a 1-second PCM WAV (22050 Hz, 16-bit mono, 1 Hz sine at 1% amplitude) in memory and loops it with
SoundPlayer.PlayLooping(). - Tray icon: GDI+ composites
icon.pngover a solid background (#107c10 green or black) at runtime — no external icon files required. - Hidden window: A 1×1 transparent
Formprovides a window handle so Windows can bind an audio session to the process.
- Virtual audio cable / loopback tools — heavyweight, changes your audio routing globally.
- Equalizer APO / voicemeeter — overkill, affects all audio.
- PowerShell script — requires a console window or a PS2EXE wrapper that adds megabytes and often breaks.
- This tool — 9.5 KB, zero dependencies, does exactly one thing.