AppTamer
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Daily Mac App: App Tamer
Last week we covered BatterySqueezer, an app designed to throttle browser processes when backgrounded. Today we'll take a look at App Tamer, a similar non-Mac App Store app that takes things further. App Tamer goes beyond throttling and will actually put applications into suspended animation. It also will tackle any program that you wish, not just limited to browsers. By default it will pause resource-heavy apps such as Photoshop and Chrome when not in use, saving all but a tiny percentage of their CPU usage. Configuration options include the ability to put a shadow mask over paused programs, helping to identify them as suspended. You also can define the period of activity before App Tamer does its thing. App Tamer will wake the paused app with user-configurable time periods, which by default is every 5 minutes. This helps prevent the app from crashing out. When you switch back to a paused application, App Tamer resuscitates the program with almost instant results -- there didn't seem much in the way of perceivable lag in my testing on a 2011 MacBook Pro. Everything then runs normally until you click away, putting the app back into suspended animation. In my rather unscientific testing, App Tamer more or less killed all CPU demands of paused applications. This led to much more free resources without the need to kill the apps when not in use. Your milage, as they say, will vary -- but a free trial is available, so you can see whether it's going to do what you need without commitment. So, if you're looking for something that goes beyond just browser throttling -- App Tamer will set you back $15 and should help you reclaim CPU-cycles, reduce heat and increase your multi-tasking battery life. Hat tip to Mystakill
Keep your CPU under control with App Tamer
It's been a little while since we've heard from St. Clair Software, makers of the well-known system utility, Default Folder X (which we've covered before). You may recall that we caught up with St. Clair Software developer Jon Gotow at WWDC '09. Well, he's got something new to announce today: App Tamer, a system utility for keeping CPU-intensive applications under control. App Tamer is similar to some other utilities, in that it allows you to "freeze" selected applications so that they use up zero CPU time, leaving more processing power for other applications. What makes App Tamer special is AutoStop, which pauses and unpauses frozen applications when you switch away from or back to them. It also has options for temporarily unfreezing applications at a configurable interval, allowing apps to complete background activities even while frozen. It's quite flexible, but takes very little user knowledge or time to get it up and running.
