---
title: Tune background pacing during severe lag
---
# Tune background pacing during severe lag

## What it is

Omniscio can slow background agent starts when it detects severe interface lag. You can adjust that protection while the app is running; no restart is required.

Open **Settings → Performance → Sessions**, expand the advanced controls, and change **Seconds between background starts during severe lag**.

- **10 seconds** is the recommended default.
- **Higher values** protect responsiveness more aggressively by starting background work less often.
- **Lower values** let background work resume faster, but provide less protection during severe lag.
- The supported range is **1–60 seconds**.

The new value takes effect within one second. It changes the existing governor in place, so queued work and fair turn-taking are preserved.

This setting applies only while Omniscio detects severe harm. It does not slow healthy operation or user-started actions.

## Where to find it

**Settings → Performance → Sessions** — expand the advanced controls and change **Seconds between background starts during severe lag**.

## How it behaves

### Your own open session is never paced

Whatever this dial is set to, and however hard the pacing is working, **the session you currently have open is never made to wait.** Omniscio treats work coming from the session on your screen as a separate kind of work and lets it straight through at every level of protection — the pacing exists to slow the agents running in the background, never you. Omniscio decides which session that is itself, from the session you last opened; nothing an agent sends can claim that status for itself.

Two things worth knowing. A session you opened in a **popped-out window** is not counted as your open session, so work started there is paced like any other agent's. And if Omniscio cannot tell which session you have open — you have not opened one yet, or the protection has been switched off — it falls back to pacing everything, and says so rather than staying quiet about it.

If you are unsure, leave it at 10 seconds. Raise it only when severe lag still allows too much background work; lower it when the computer remains responsive and you want faster background progress during a severe event.

## Related

It is one of several performance controls: keeping the computer smooth under load is the umbrella switch in the same area, and the system file cache cap guards the other freeze this part of the product exists to prevent.