# Paused Queues

There are cases where you want to pause the queue. For example, during the holiday season, you do not want to get PRs merged. Pausing a queue allows you to control whether devs can merge PRs.

You can pause queues per repository or per base branch (e.g. `main`). This allows you to pause the queue for the `release` branch, while allowing devs to merge PRs into `main`. The control is on the Web UI and provided via [API](/mergequeue/how-to-guides/pause-unpause-queues-via-api.md).

<figure><img src="/files/noGOpOjl6xLALDLOEbq9" alt=""><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

When a queue is paused, MergeQueue works processes the PRs up to the merge timing. This includes creating a draft PR for [<mark style="color:blue;">the parallel mode</mark>](/mergequeue/concepts/parallel-mode.md). The [<mark style="color:blue;">instant merge action</mark>](/mergequeue/concepts/priority-merges/instant-merges.md) also stops working when a queue is paused.

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Deactivating a repository will halt most of the Aviator features on the repository. By deactivating a repository, any queuing actions won't be processed nor any comments are posted from Aviator. The only exception to this is changesets and you can create them in a deactivated repository.


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