Our app for managing your applications' CPU usage is getting a big upgrade! App Tamer 3.0 has significant internal improvements, new capabilities and an updated UI. Highlights include:

• Switchable settings profiles
• Custom rules and a Focus filter to switch between profiles
• CPU graphs that are much improved and have customizable colors
• Process control settings are shown in the Settings window and you can edit them when apps aren't running
• CPU temperature is shown and can be used to activate settings profiles
• Memory usage of each process can be displayed alongside CPU usage
• You can slow down and auto-quit menu bar applications
• App Tamer is more robust on heavily loaded Macs
• Process monitoring is more efficient
• Compatibility with M5 Macs
• UI improvements throughout
• Bug fixes (of course)

For more details about the changes, check out this blog post.

What's new in build 3.0b8:

• App Tamer ensures that processes stay on the efficiency cores once they're moved there.
• Restored the Option key as a means of showing additional settings when clicking on a process.
• When showing / hiding the Memory column in the process window, the window's position is adjusted as well as its size.
• Clicking on an app in the dock works consistently when an app has been stopped in the background.
• Corrected a window positioning glitch when clicking on the menu bar icon.
• Fixed a crash when quitting.

What has changed in previous betas:

• Added a checkbox in the settings so you can turn high-CPU warnings off.
• Improved the Process Details popover so it's more organized and shows the CPU and memory usage of subprocesses.
• Added a help button at the bottom of the main window to show more details about the process status indicators.
• App Tamer will close its main window when checking for updates so that it doesn't obscure the update window.
• Fixed crashes that could occur at launch and quit.
• Updated the process throttler to better control processes that utilize all processor cores.
• The temperature plot on the graph extends a dimmed line past the right axis to make it easier to locate.
• Hovering the mouse over column headers in the process list highlights them to indicate they're clickable.
• Column headers in the process list show more clearly which column is selected for sorting.
• Clicking on a slowed or stopped app in the Dock will bring it to the front more reliably.
• Version 2 settings are not removed from the preferences file in case you want to downgrade from v3 to v2.
• In some situations, the status message at the bottom of the window would not indicate that auto-stop was turned off. This has been fixed.
• Limiting a process to a certain CPU usage is done more accurately.
• App Tamer can display RAM usage. You can turn this on in App Tamer > Settings > Stats or by Control-clicking on the graph in the main window.
• Made header text in the process lists a little more prominent. Reminder: Click on a column header to sort by that column.
• You can once again stop background processes (with an appropriate warning).
• Updating process data is more efficient, so App Tamer itself uses less CPU.
• Reorganized the Stats pane in the Settings window.
• Settings correctly remember the last used tab.
• Fixed a crash at startup.
• License enforcement is turned off, but an upgrade watermark on the graph in the main window wasn't disabled. This build fixes that so the upgrade reminder won't appear.
• You can click on the images of standard / dark appearance to change the settings.
• Processes are grayed out appropriately in the process list when their settings cannot be changed.
• When the process list is in "Show high-CPU processes" mode, system services are included when their usage is 10% or more.
• Updated debug logging so that useful information doesn't get redacted by the macOS log system.
• Corrected layout problems in the main window on macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
• Fixed ugly list borders in the Settings window on macOS 10.13 High Sierra.
• Fixed spacing of standard / dark images in Settings > Options.
• Eliminated a crash that occurred at startup on older systems.
• Fixed inconsistent mouse tracking in the process lists.
• Double-clicking an app in the process list brings it to the front.
• Eliminated glitches, flickering and weird click behavior when showing / hiding the settings popover in the main window.
• Settings and process detail popovers stay with the selected process if the list is scrolled using a scroll wheel or gesture.
• A selected process in the process list stays selected when the list is re-sorted.
• Fixed keyboard focus problems in the main window.
• Fixed a crash in license checking code.
• Updated images in the Quick Start.
• Added support for measuring CPU temperature on M5 Macs.
• Use correct terminology for Super and Performance Cores on M5 Macs.
• Setting the user default NSMenuEnableActionImages to 0 will turn off all of App Tamer's menu item icons in Tahoe.
• Made App Tamer's window less "sticky" so that it dismisses itself when you click outside of it (it will still stay open if the settings window is open, however).
• Fixed the layout of various Settings panes so that buttons aren't clipped when Increase Contrast is turned on in System Settings > Accessibility.
• Images for Settings > Options and Quick Start have been updated with the new UI.
• Renamed the button for restoring default settings in Settings > Control > Settings.
• You can create multiple profiles of app settings and switch between them.
• Settings for applications are listed in the Settings window so you can view and edit them when they're not running.
• Activation rules can be created to automatically switch between different profiles based on idle time, time of day, ac / battery power, battery charge level, which app is frontmost, if a process is running, or CPU temperature.
• Added a Focus filter so you can activate profiles when you change Focus modes.
• App Tamer now displays CPU temperature on supported machines.
• You can set keyboard shortcuts to turn AutoStop on and off, show the main window and show the settings.
• Improved CPU management for apps that have multiple subprocesses (like web browsers and the Spotlight indexer).
• Contextual menus in the process list include commands for changing the settings for a process and showing process details.
• The process detail window has a contextual menu so you can reveal, sample and quit subprocesses.
• Added "Search Web for Info" to the contextual menu in the process list (currently uses Google, but that can be changed).
• The CPU graphs are so much better.
• You can customize the colors used in the CPU graph.
• The CPU usage graph can be set to scale the Y axis automatically based on usage data or to always show 100%.
• Resolved a small time misalignment between application CPU usage and overall CPU usage in the history graph.
• Added progress windows while sampling processes from the contextual menu in the process list or from process detail windows.
• Worked around Tahoe's behavior of occasionally ignoring requests to move a process to the efficiency cores.
• App Tamer can see when a process is scheduled on Apple Silicon efficiency cores. This helps catch Tahoe forcing processes back to the performance cores and accurately shows processes that request to be run on efficiency cores (like mdbulkimport, mdsync and netbiosd).
• Processes running on efficiency cores are shown with blue dots in the process list. If they've requested efficiency cores themselves (rather than put there by App Tamer), their "Run this app on the CPU's efficiency cores" setting will have a checkmark, but will be disabled because you can't move these processes to performance cores.
• On Apple Silicon Macs, you can now choose to display P and E Core usage as a percentage of total CPU usage or as a percentage of each core type.
• Menu bar applications can now be quit after they've been inactive for a specified time.
• Menu bar apps can be throttled in the foreground as well as the background.
• The appearance of App Tamer's process window has been refined and modernized. Transparency can be disabled in the preferences if it's not your thing.
• Switching the process list between showing all processes, just high-CPU processes, and filtering using the search field is more logical.
• App Tamer's menu in the Dock now provides commands to open your settings, show the process window, and toggle auto-stop on and off.
• High-CPU warnings offer a choice for how long to mute further warnings.
• High-CPU notifications will no longer be shown if a Focus is active and you allow App Tamer to see your Focus status.
• Improved handling of heavily loaded systems so App Tamer doesn't prompt to reinstall its helper app or slow down unusably.
• When sorting processes in the process list by name, the order is case insensitive.
• Reduced App Tamer's CPU usage by caching more state information.
• You can hide App Tamer's icon in the menu bar and only show numerical CPU usage to minimize the space it takes up. Use this Terminal command: "defaults write com.stclairsoft.AppTamer showStatusItemIcon 0". To show the icon again, change the zero to a 1.
• Added a "notWhenSoundIsPlaying" parameter to the "manage" AppleScript verb.
• App Tamer will not slow or stop Microsoft Edge while it is downloading a large file.
• CrossOver will not be slowed or stopped while an emulated application is frontmost.
• Apps created by the Helium web browser are now supported.
• The colorized menu bar icon will remain uncolored until CPU usage is above 10%.
• The UI has been tweaked to accommodate Tahoe's giant rounded corners.
• App settings work correctly for menu bar applications and other processes that aren't full-fledged applications.
• Corrected a problem that resulted in a delay before the process list would show that a process was moved to efficiency cores.
• When turning App Tamer off, the prompt for the length of time has keyboard focus when it appears.
• High CPU usage warnings for helpers and subprocesses now refer to their parent process.
• Fixed a bug which caused the app settings window to mistakenly say that some apps "provide essential services and can't be slowed or stopped".
• When App Tamer's window first appears, the search field is no longer active by default. This prevents inadvertent filtering of the process list.
• Fixed crashes that were occurring when moving processes to E-cores after the system forced them back to P-cores.
• Fixed a problem with the process controller starting prematurely when the helper app needs to be updated.
• Made the helper app a little less neurotic about timeouts when communicating with App Tamer.
• Fixed a problem with some processes being slowed or paused after the machine wakes from sleep.
• Fixed the highlighting of processes as you hover the mouse over them.
• Fixed a problem with stale status messages hanging around in the process window footer.
• Ensured that the alert to install the helper app is brought to the front when it comes up.
• Fixed the text in the menu bar icon so it doesn't get clipped under certain circumstances.
• Fixed title bars in About and license entry panels so they're correct on Tahoe.
• You can no longer stop the "logd" system process because that's a Bad Idea.
• Processes launched by nvim will be shown in the process list.
• Fixed a crash that could occur immediately after launching App Tamer.
• Added icons to menus when running on Tahoe.

How to be a beta tester:

In order to beta test, you must have a stable, predictable machine (at least as much as that's possible ) and be willing to commit time to work with us if you discover a bug or conflict. If you encounter incorrect or confusing behavior, please try to summarize what you were doing at the time it happened and supply that along with a crash log or screenshot.

Download:

Click below to download the public test version of App Tamer 3:

Download App Tamer 3.0b8

Please note that App Tamer 3.0b8 is pre-release software, and as such, may contain bugs. It has been tested for compatibility on a number of systems, but has not been fully qualified and released. When testing any unreleased software, you should have a backup copy of any important files, since a software bug could cause your Mac to crash.

Bug Reports:

Don't assume that a bug you've found has already been reported!! Please submit all bug reports and feedback to AppTamer@stclairsoft.com.