Process Control — Manage misbehaving system processes

[vitor]

Call top for an auto-updating list of processes, ordered by CPU usage. Type to filter by process name.

On each process:
+ ⌘↵ quits.
+ ⌥↵ forcibly kills.
+ ⌃↵ limits CPU usage.
+ fn↵ lowers priority (increases niceness).
+ ⇧↵ freezes.

↵ gives more granularity over the options.

 

Download | Source

Edited November 22, 2020 by vitor

[xilopaint]

Thank you! The auto-update feature is pretty awesome!

[nikivi]

I really needed this. Thank you @vitor.

 

I used this before to kill Electron instances once in a while.

Edited August 15, 2017 by nikivi

[vitor]

Update.

Titles in granular control show value. This is mostly a cosmetic change to make it clearer.

To update, download the latest version (same URL) or wait a few days and it’ll prompt you to on next usage, since it uses OneUpdater.
 

[Aesir Zoe]

Thanks. 
I don't know why Top Processes doesn't work. This one is helpful.

[vitor]

9 hours ago, x7x7 said:

I don't know why Top Processes doesn't work.

 

Because it hasn’t been updated in four years, and things that started to break were never fixed. I also used that Workflow, until it got so broken I decided to make this alternative.

[kodiak]

Thank you so much for this great workflow. It works superbly.

 

Is it possible that you add a "Restart" option? Ideally, two types of "Restart" would be available:

• "Quit and Relaunch". For apps that are not really frozen and for some reason just need a restart, I rather quit conventionally to not lose any data.
• "Force Quit and Relaunch" for apps that are frozen.

Thanks again!

[vitor]

@kodiak Thank you for the kind words.

 

It isn’t really feasible to do what you ask in this Workflow. It is concerned with processes and you’re asking about apps. They’re different concepts that need to be interacted with differently.

[kodiak]

@vitor, I see. Well, I guess it was a misuse of words and what I really referred to were processes.

 

I checked Activity Monitor and for a given process there, you have an option to Quit (⌥⌘Q) and Force Quit (that small icon, see attachment), which is different than the former option, if I'm not mistaken.

 

Thanks.

 

[vitor]

2 hours ago, kodiak said:

for a given process there, you have an option to Quit (⌥⌘Q)

 

That’s ⌘↵ in the Workflow (Kill process).

 

2 hours ago, kodiak said:

and Force Quit

 

⌥↵ (Force kill process).

[kodiak]

Thanks @vitor.

 

1. Is the Quit command in Activity Monitor equals to conventional quitting (⌘Q) when there's a standard macOS app in focus? (i. e. Chrome).

2. What I was inquiring about was the possibility that you add an option to relaunch the process that was just quitted, or force quitted.

 

Regards

[vitor]

42 minutes ago, kodiak said:

1. Is the Quit command in Activity Monitor equals to conventional quitting (⌘Q) when there's a standard macOS app in focus? (i. e. Chrome).

 

As far as I’m aware, yes.

 

43 minutes ago, kodiak said:

2. What I was inquiring about was the possibility that you add an option to relaunch the process that was just quitted, or force quitted.

 

I know, and that’s where my previous reply applies. You can’t simply restart a process; not how you can an app. They are not the same thing.

Open Google Chrome, then search for it in with the Workflow. You’ll find a bunch of Google Chrome Helper processes. Those are not the app. Restarting those would not restart Chrome, and they are managed by Chrome, as they should be. It is possible to restart apps with Alfred, but that’s not what this Workflow is about; this Workflow is about processes. To restart apps, you’d need to build something different.

[vitor]

Update.

 

Increased precision when killing cpulimit.

To update, download the latest version (same URL) or wait a few days and it’ll prompt you to on next usage, since it uses OneUpdater.

[Maddog]

I installed this app which has a ê in the name, it kills the workflow   - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fenêtre-lite/id1288451627

Edited August 6, 2018 by Maddog

[vitor]

@Maddog I’ll need you to be way more specific.

• Which macOS version are you on?
• Which Alfred version are you on?
• Which ProcessControl version are you on?
• What do you mean “kills the workflow”? Does it crash, does nothing show?
• Open the debugger, set the log output to “All Information”, do your action, and post the output.

[Maddog]

Hey, sorry...

 

OS: 10.11.6

Alfred: 3.6.2 (922)

Process Control: 1.0.6

 

Yeah, the workflow just doesn't show anything, the debug shows:

 

[2018-08-06 10:05:35][ERROR: input.scriptfilter] Code 1: ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow Scripts/F4B6A515-4330-4787-A8F6-B96452EDC1E5:4:in `split': invalid byte sequence in UTF-8 (ArgumentError)
	from ~/Library/Caches/com.runningwithcrayons.Alfred-3/Workflow Scripts/F4B6A515-4330-4787-A8F6-B96452EDC1E5:4:in `<main>'

 

Thanks

 

[vitor]

22 minutes ago, Maddog said:

OS: 10.11.6

 

That’s quite a bit behind. Open a terminal and run /usr/bin/ruby --version. What do you get?

[Maddog]

I get this: ruby 2.0.0p648 (2015-12-16 revision 53162) [universal.x86_64-darwin15]

 

I know I'm behind, but I'm just worried about all the changes in the recent OS versions (don't want to switch from the old Karabiner, for example).

[vitor]

Try these two versions:

• pc1.
• pc2.

Does any of them fix it? Which?

[Maddog]

No, same problem with both

[vitor]

Since this is an issue with the Ruby version on an older OS, I’m tempted to not fix that one. I usually try to support the current macOS release and the one before, and 10.11 is two versions (soon three) behind. Fixing this means introducing a workaround that makes no sense for later versions.

 

That particular issue is difficult for me to debug and fix since I share neither the OS, ruby version, or app with similar peculiarity.

 

I’ll give it some thought.

[fuorviatos]

Hey vitor,

Thanks for the nice workflow

it seems here, I cmd+enter on a process does nothing, same for kill -15 *process name*

• Which macOS version are you on? Catalina 10.15.2
• Which Alfred version are you on? Alfred 4 (latest version from the official website, downloaded 2 days ago)
• Which ProcessControl version are you on? (downloaded from this community readme)

[vitor]

On 3/3/2020 at 5:02 PM, fuorviatos said:

Thanks for the nice workflow

 

Thank you for the kind words.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 5:02 PM, fuorviatos said:

it seems here, I cmd+enter on a process does nothing

 

I need something more specific. Open the debugger, set the log output to “All Information”, and post the output.

 

On 3/3/2020 at 5:02 PM, fuorviatos said:

same for kill -15 *process name*

 

kill takes process IDs, not names (that’s killall)

 

On 3/3/2020 at 5:02 PM, fuorviatos said:

• Which Alfred version are you on? Alfred 4 (latest version from the official website, downloaded 2 days ago)
• Which ProcessControl version are you on? (downloaded from this community readme)

 

I need specific versions.

[RuslanI]

It would not run on Alfred 3.

Is Alfred 4 is so much different that workflows are incompatible? 

[vitor]

7 minutes ago, RuslanI said:

Is Alfred 4 is so much different that workflows are incompatible? 

 

New Alfred versions introduce capabilities that (logically) previous versions don’t know about. So when you save a Workflow in a newer version, it stops being accessible to previous ones.

 

2 minutes ago, RuslanI said:

It would not run on Alfred 3.

 

And it never will again. Though it would be possible to make the Workflow work on Alfred 3, it would require extra work on my part, including having an older Alfred version installed and developing on it. My Workflows are distributed for free, so I only support the Alfred version I’m on—always the latest. That allows me to concentrate on take advantage of all Alfred’s features.

 

You may be able to find a version of this Workflow that works on Alfred 3, if you scour through the Github commits—unsure, as I don’t recall if I built this on Alfred 3 or 4.