

Once you get the pid of an app, enter the below command to limit the CPU usage of the app.

Now, find the pid of running apps with ps command: I thought this old OS X style software was no longer working on current versions of macOS, but to my surprise, it is still working on latest macOS Monterey like a charm if you want to limit CPU usage on Mac, probably due to the good compatibility with stable kernels (Basically, there is no OS kernel that changes system calls regularly).Īfter downloading cputhrottle.gz and unpacking it, open Terminal app and grant permission to run this app. The developer provides the source code and compiled binary executable on its official page. This tiny tool has no GUI and is a lightweight utility based on command line. Perhaps you are wondering, what kind of people would have this need? You have this need when some companies force their employees to install “xx security software” and from time to time it scans files in the background and eats CPU like crazy, and you are not allowed to close and uninstall it. This allows users or developers to have the opportunity to make system calls to fulfill a requirement – to limit the CPU usage of a process or app. Broadly speaking, GUI layer is a close source, which is the essence of macOS the core system (darwin-xnu) is open source. But what do we do when we really need to limit Mac CPU usage for a specific app?Īs we know, Apple’s macOS is a half-open and half-closed operating system.

It was discovered a long time ago that Activity Monitor on Mac is really just a pure monitoring service and cannot be set manually by the user to prioritize processes like Task Manager on Windows OS.
