Temporarily Free your System Resources by Pausing a Process

Process of your system Macintosh

When you are in the middle of a task that consumes your CPU and you want to do multi-tasking then your system might be hanged. To avoid this condition there is a way to reduce the system performance by pausing the other processes in your Macintosh.

In today’s modern world, we have computers that are more powerful to their ancestors. They can undo any task in a fraction of seconds. However, there are times when we might require our system to focus on a particular task. Nevertheless, the CPU is overwhelmed with other processes. In such cases, you need to pause the processes so that the system does what you have told it to do.

For instance, let us consider that you are running your Macintosh to run a hard dish that is being ripped. You can also be converting a large number of audio files into iTunes. Or else you must be exporting a video through iMovie. In all these cases, the completion of the task will take several hours. Finally you are left with a slow machine until the task is completed.

However, there is other way around it. You need to pause the system so that the job you are willing to do can be completed without much effort. You can pause the process that is taking time and then after you are done with the work you are doing you can later resume it. It will be like nothing happened and the system will start working on the previous leaving you satisfied that you did your job.

1. Open the Activity Monitor in your system by following Applications>Utilities

2. Once the Activity monitor is launched, you need to find the process that you wish to pause. For example, I want to pause my iTunes that is converting 200 hundred songs into iTunes and is taking too much of my time. Note: you will have to note the PID (Process identification number) of the process before you can pause it.

3. Next launch the terminal by following this process Applications>Utilities. There you will find a number in the box. Replace that number with the actual PID that you had found.

kill -STOP PID

4. When you hit enter, the process will be paused. Do not worry, as you will not be losing any of your work or the program or application that has been running will not loose the pace of work. It will all be there without any harm. The activity monitor will show the reduced CPU usage and this will ensure that you can now work for your other work.

5. After you are done with your work, you can unfreeze the process and allow the system to work on its own pace. You will have to use the same command. The only difference will be to replace the STOP with the command CONT and repeat the process from step 3.

Tags: Macintosh OS X