NVIDIA GPU Toggle Controller

A lightweight utility to enable or disable NVIDIA GPU drivers on demand. Reduce noise, save power, and take full control of your GPU resources.

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Features

• Enable or disable NVIDIA GPU drivers on demand
• Reduce noise and power consumption when GPU is idle
• Simple aliases for fast control: nvidia-on and nvidia-off
• Clean and lightweight, pure shell scripts (Bash/Zsh compatible)
• Tested on Ubuntu Desktop and Server editions
• No reboot required to toggle drivers

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Use Cases

This tool is for users who need fine-grained control over their NVIDIA GPU drivers, especially to reduce noise and save power when the GPU is idle.

You may benefit from this tool if you:

• Use turbine-cooled NVIDIA GPUs (e.g., RTX 3090 blower style) that run loud even when idle
• Want to reduce fan noise and lower power consumption when not using the GPU
• Run AI workloads or GPU-intensive tasks only at specific times, and want to disable the GPU driver during idle periods
• Prefer to manually control when your GPU drivers are loaded or unloaded, without rebooting
• Have a multi-GPU setup and want to selectively disable specific cards (advanced users)

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Supported Systems

• ✅ Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 LTS Desktop & Server
• ✅ Debian 11 / 12 (partial support, requires manual initramfs updates)
• ❌ Not compatible with Arch, Fedora, or other non-Debian-based distros (may require manual adaptation of initramfs commands)

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Installation

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/arniezhu/nvidia-gpu-toggle.git
   cd nvidia-gpu-toggle

2. Run the installer:

   chmod +x install.sh && ./install.sh

This will:

• Copy toggle scripts to ~/.local/nvidia-gpu-toggle/
• Create /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-nvidia.conf to prevent auto-loading drivers
• Add aliases (nvidia-on / nvidia-off) to your shell config (.bashrc / .zshrc)

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Uninstallation

To completely remove the NVIDIA GPU Toggle Controller from your system, run:

chmod +x uninstall.sh && ./uninstall.sh

This will:

• Remove all toggle scripts from ~/.local/nvidia-gpu-toggle/
• Delete all modprobe configs (blacklist-nvidia.conf / nvidia-block.conf)
• Clean aliases (nvidia-on / nvidia-off) from your shell config (.bashrc / .zshrc)

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Usage

Run the following commands to control your GPU drivers:

nvidia-on     # Enable NVIDIA drivers
nvidia-off    # Disable NVIDIA drivers

• nvidia-on loads the NVIDIA driver modules and removes them from the blacklist
• nvidia-off unloads the NVIDIA driver modules and adds them to the blacklist to prevent auto-loading on boot
• If aliases are missing, run: source ~/.bashrc or source ~/.zshrc

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⚠️ Notes

• Do NOT run install.sh with sudo or as root!
• The script automatically uses sudo for privileged operations (writing blacklist config, updating initramfs, etc.)
• Disabling the NVIDIA driver will prevent the GUI from working if no other GPU is present
• Tested with NVIDIA RTX 3090, 3080, and other cards (blower/turbine coolers benefit the most)
• For best results, run nvidia-off via SSH or from a separate TTY (e.g. Ctrl+Alt+F3)