# How to pause/unpause a temporal workflow?

**URL:** <https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Created:** [July 9, 2024, 8:04am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766 "2024-07-09T08:04:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shengao\_Yao](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/shengao_yao/32/4680_2.png) [@Shengao\_Yao](https://community.temporal.io/u/Shengao_Yao)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2024, 8:04am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766/1 "2024-07-09T08:04:07Z")

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Hi folks! A questions from our users.

> 

I was wondering if there is an option to pause/unpause a temporal workflow? We would like to pause our workflow during service deployments. I’m aware that Temporal does not officially support pausing and unpausing, just wondering if anyone has any creative ideas 🙂  
Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shengao\_Yao](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/shengao_yao/32/4680_2.png) [@Shengao\_Yao](https://community.temporal.io/u/Shengao_Yao)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2024, 8:06am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766/2 "2024-07-09T08:06:11Z")

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I only know two ways to pause a running workflow.

1. Stop all the relate worker.
2. Call workflow.sleep() inside the workflow.

Doesn’t seem to solve the problem.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![taonic](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/community.temporal.io/taonic/32/5556_2.png) [@taonic](https://community.temporal.io/u/taonic)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2024, 10:02am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766/3 "2024-07-09T10:02:22Z")

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One neat solution is to use `workflow.Await` + Signal as demonstrated [here](https://community.temporal.io/t/pausing-workflow-execution/10445/3) (it’s in TS but applies to other SDKs too).

There is ongoing work in place to investigate the native support mentioned at [Workflow Pause / Unpause · Issue #3006 · temporalio/temporal · GitHub](https://github.com/temporalio/temporal/issues/3006)

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**Author:** ![davidc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@davidc](https://community.temporal.io/u/davidc)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2024, 2:53am UTC](https://community.temporal.io/t/how-to-pause-unpause-a-temporal-workflow/12766/4 "2024-07-15T02:53:33Z")

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Why do you want to pause workflows during deployments? Usually we desire the opposite, i.e. deployments should not cause interruptions. Could you elaborate on what your use case is?  
For cases where we want the workflow to pause and wait for an external event, say from another system or a human action, then signals is the recommended way.