Progress of a long query execution

I have changed a field type from float to decimal on a database of 8gb (27M records)

In the statusbar at the rigth lower corner i see a progress time of the execution. But after a while i get the wait cursor and Heidisql seems 'hanging'/'freezing' and my progress time is also 'hanging'/'freezing'.

When i start on a other computer heidisql and go to the Host-Tab and the to the Processes-Tab. I can see my query and the running time and the progess and the max-stage and current stage.

Is it possible to interact with these and show the progress based on these values?

That should be somehow possible, you just need a second database connection for it, to prevent simultaneous operations on the first one. In case of a tunneled or somehow slow connection this can make the app quite unstable. Also, I'm normally voting for a single connection per session, as you may have session based variables set, which are different in a second connection.