Suspend a resource consuming process on Mac OSX with this simple command.

There are applications that are buggy enough that they go beyond their resource quota and make the operating system look like a culprit. One way of dealing with these issues is to end the misbehaving program, in effect, killing the process. But there are some instances where killing the process is not a reality.

For example, the Firefox browser. With its multi-tab feature it is quite possible that we end up opening far too many tabs and that seems to consume more memory and battery and other resources. When that happens we might think of killing the process but if you use Mac OSX you can suspend the process instead so once you are done with any other work on your computer you can resume the process and continue your work.

You’ll be surprised to see how easy it is to suspend a process in Mac OSX.

For example, to suspend Firefox, open-up Terminal and type-in

killall -STOP firefox-bin

Once suspended you should be able to see the Firefox process being marked in RED with the status of “Not Responding”.

Suspended processes won’t be allocated any CPU cycles and so indirectly will use less resources including battery. You might be seeing the memory still allocated the same on the above screenshot but when there is a demand for more memory then Mac OSX will swap those inactive memory pages.

Then once you are ready to resume using Firefox, type-in the following command on Terminal

killall -CONT firefox-bin

Once resumed the process will be marked as usual as indicated above. You can then continue to use the application.

Process Suspension on Mac OSX is a powerful feature if you know how to use it effectively.

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Firefox, How To, Mac, Mac OSX