App Freeze — Pause and resume execution of the frontmost app

[vitor]

Usage

Pause execution of the frontmost app via the freeze keyword. Resume with unfreeze. Inspired by the Universal Pause Button.

Configure the Hotkeys for faster triggering.

⤓ Install on the Alfred Gallery | Source

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by vitor

[politicus]

@Vìtor

 

1°) I just tried the workflow and it works pretty well    Thanks for sharing it.

I was wondering what particular use cases you had in mind when you created it? 

 

2°) Feature request :

I believe that adding a notification (Post notification or Large type) showing that the application is "on pause" would make sense.

For example when I paused an archive extraction in Forklift the only info showing me the application was "on pause" was a spinning wheel. 

As ForkLift often shows me a spinning wheel, especially when backing up my file, I found it a little bit confusing the first time I used the workflow.

I thought "here we go, ForkLift is crashing, again". While it was not.

 

What do you think?

[Maddog]

I was just thinking how awesome it would be to set timeouts for apps to be frozen across the entire laptop automatically.

Like if I haven't switched to some app for a while, auto-suspend it. It would require an exclusion list (like to ignore terminal and chat apps), but I still think it can be awesome for battery life.

 

Yeah, almost forgot to say thanks, learned a new thing today about the kill command

Edited June 13, 2015 by Maddog

[vitor]

politicus: see the story I link to in the top post. I liked the use case there and found his story fun, so I decided to create this. I don’t think I’ll even use it myself, though — it was built really only because I enjoyed the story and felt like creating it.

Adding notifications sounds reasonable. I’ll do it soon.

Maddog: not only would that be out of scope for this workflow in particular, that does not make much sense for any Alfred workflow (or regular app, for that matter). You’re suggesting something that works autonomously, and that is not the job of an Alfred workflow — those should be explicitly called.

Most importantly, though, even an app would be subpar, as that is the job of the OS itself, and OS X already does it.

[vitor]

Updated to add notifications.

[Serge]

Thanks for sharing this workflow. 

[vitor]

Update.

It now uses OneUpdater, so this should be the last time you need to manually update.

[vitor]

Update.

New icon.

To update, download the latest version (same URL) or wait a few days (15 or less) and it’ll prompt you to on next usage, since it uses OneUpdater.
 

[vitor]

Updated to 2023.1.

Workflow is now distributed via the Alfred Gallery. Download the new version from there or update directly from Alfred.

• New repository.
• New icon.
• New About.
• Add configurable keywords.
• Remove OneUpdater in favour of Gallery updating.