Why Did My Recording Stop?
Pulse stops recording automatically in several situations. This guide explains each, and how to adjust the behavior where you can.
Reason 1: AFK Auto-Stop (30 minutes of no input)
Pulse stops recording after 30 minutes of no detected input — zero mouse movement, zero clicks, zero keystrokes throughout that window. This protects you from accidentally accumulating hours of blank captures when you step away.
When it applies: every recording, every plan.
What you see: an OS notification ("Recording stopped — idle for 30 minutes") and an in-app banner.
How to adjust: the AFK threshold is fixed at 30 minutes in v0.1.0 — not user-configurable. If you need to record long stretches of low-activity work (watching a reference video while sketching, say), keep small mouse movements going.
The AFK timeout is independent from the Idle threshold setting in Settings → Recording, which controls the "net work time" calculation in analytics — not session termination. The two are different concepts.
Reason 2: Whitelisted App Lost Focus
If you have Auto-record on whitelist enabled and Auto-stop on blur also enabled, Pulse stops the session when the foreground app changes from one of your whitelisted apps to something else.
When it applies: only when both auto_record_on_whitelist and auto_stop_on_blur are ON in Settings → Recording.
What you see: recording stops the moment you switch from, e.g., Procreate to Slack.
How to adjust: turn off Auto-stop on blur in Settings → Recording if you want recording to continue when you switch apps. You can keep auto-record ON and auto-stop OFF independently.
Reason 3: Five Capture Failures in a Row
If five consecutive capture intervals fail (screenshot driver error, disk full, permission silently revoked, etc.), Pulse stops the session to avoid accumulating broken evidence.
What you see: an OS notification with a reason — "Capture failed" or "Storage failed" — plus an in-app banner. The reason reflects the dominant failure category in those five attempts.
How to adjust / recover:
Check free disk space and the location of your Work folder.
If a permission was revoked mid-session, see Fixing macOS Permission Errors.
Restart Pulse and try again. If failures continue, see "Still Not Working?" below.
Reason 4: Permission Revoked Mid-Session
If macOS revokes a required permission while Pulse is recording — for example, you toggle Screen Recording off in System Settings — Pulse stops, because capture would silently degrade otherwise.
What you see: an in-app warning naming the missing permission, plus the session ending.
How to fix: see Fixing macOS Permission Errors.
Reason 5: System Sleep / Power Disconnect
When your Mac sleeps, Pulse pauses the capture loop. When you wake the Mac, capture resumes. The gap shows up in analytics as inactive time but does not break the chain of evidence — captures both before and after the sleep are independently anchored.
When it applies: Mac sleep, battery exhaustion + power off, closed lid (with sleep mode).
How to adjust: extend System Settings → Lock Screen → Turn display off after if you don't want sleep interruptions during long sessions.
Reason 6: Manual Stop You May Have Forgotten
You can stop recording from:
The Stop button in the Work view
The menubar tray icon → Stop Recording
Quitting Pulse (⌘Q from the Pulse menu or right-click the tray icon → Quit) — Pulse finalizes the in-flight capture and any pending OpenTimestamps submissions before exiting
If a session ended without you pressing any of the above, walk through Reasons 1–5 in order. The OS notification that appears at the moment of an automatic stop usually names the trigger (idle, capture failure, etc.).
Still Not Working?
Send a bug report through Pulse's feedback form at https://tsukulogic.com/pulse/forms and include:
The OS notification text that appeared when the session ended (if any)
What you were doing right before it stopped
Whether it reproduces (for example: "happens every time I switch from Procreate to Safari")
Your macOS version (System Settings → General → About) and Pulse version (Settings → System → About)