AFK Wave turns "did they leave or are they just standing there?" into something you can actually see. When you stop providing any input - no movement, no mouse-look, no clicks - for a configurable amount of time, AFK Wave marks you as away: a small AFK badge with an idle timer shows up in the top-left corner, and your character begins waving its hand on a loop so other players (and your own third-person view) get an unmistakable "be right back" signal.
What it does
- Watches for genuine inactivity - it tracks your position, look direction, mouse cursor and mouse buttons. The moment any of them change, you're "back" and the idle timer resets to zero.
- Once you've been idle past the threshold, a top-left AFK badge appears showing how long you've been away (
AFK 1m 12s). It pulses gently so it's easy to spot. - While AFK, your character periodically calls the vanilla swing animation, so in third-person and to other players on a server you visibly wave instead of standing frozen.
- Stops the instant you do anything - one mouse twitch or key press clears the AFK state and the wave.
Commands & controls
- O - toggle AFK Wave on/off. An action-bar message confirms the new state. The setting persists across restarts.
/afkwave- print the current state and idle threshold in chat./afkwave threshold <seconds>- set how long you must be idle (1-3600 s, default 300 = 5 minutes) before you're marked AFK. Persisted toconfig/afkwave.json.- The badge respects F1 (hide HUD) and only renders while you're in a world.
Why
On servers, people can't tell whether you're AFK or just thinking. A frozen avatar reads the same as a lagged-out one. AFK Wave gives a clear, friendly tell - the badge for you, the wave for everyone else - without you having to type "brb" every time you go grab a drink.
Notes
- Pure client-side - install on your client only. Works on any Fabric server, fully vanilla compatible; the server can't tell it's there. The wave uses the normal hand-swing packet, so other players see it naturally.
- Not a macro or anti-kick: it only animates an idle indicator and never sends movement or keeps you logged in. If a server kicks for inactivity, AFK Wave won't stop that.
- No mixins, no extra dependencies beyond Fabric API. Negligible performance cost (a handful of comparisons per tick).
Compatibility
Minecraft 1.21.8, 1.21.9, 1.21.10, 1.21.11 - Fabric Loader 0.16+. One JAR covers all four. Drop into your mods/ folder alongside Fabric API.
