I’ve been working on App Tamer 3 for quite a while, beefing up its internals to make it more robust and more efficient, while adding requested features and improving the user interface. It’s finally ready for public testing – I’m excited to hear what you think!
App Tamer displays and controls how apps and services are using your Mac’s processors. There are hundreds of separate processes at work on your Mac – some very apparent, like Safari, and some that run in the background to support apps and the operating system.
All of these processes need processing (CPU) time to do their jobs, and macOS typically manages them fairly efficiently. However, it doesn’t always prioritize those jobs optimally. Spotlight, Time Machine, or a browser running in the background may use processing power that could be otherwise allocated to a task that’s more important to you.
App Tamer lets you take charge of processes that are consuming CPU cycles, slowing them down so they don’t impact your work as much. It can also shift processes to slower, more power-efficient processor cores, ultimately saving power (and battery runtime, if you’re using a MacBook).
And yes, if you’ve encountered a bug in macOS that inexplicably drives a service to use 100% or more of a CPU core, App Tamer can throttle that back to whatever CPU usage you decide to give it. Is photoanalysisd churning away on your Photos library to the detriment of all else? Set App Tamer to run it on the efficiency cores and give it no more that 10%.
New Features and Improvements
Here’s a quick run-down of the major changes in App Tamer. There’s lots more, but these are the highlights.
CPU Temperature
App Tamer now displays CPU temperature so you can see how CPU load is affecting temperature. This lets you make intelligent decisions about which processes need to be slowed down to keep your Mac cool and running quietly. And yes, you can automate app management based on temperature with custom rules (below).
CPU Usage Graphs with More Detail and Accuracy
App Tamer 2’s graphing of CPU usage was pretty rudimentary. Version 3 displays usage data more accurately with customizable colors, automatic scaling and properly annotated axes. It gives you more insight into what’s happening on your Mac.
Switchable Profiles
App Tamer’s ability to fine-tune priorities for apps and background processes is great, but up until now you could only set up one configuration of CPU limits, auto-hide, auto-quit, etc. Now you can create different settings profiles and switch between them. This lets you customize how apps are managed to fit different needs and workflows.
Custom Rules and Focus Filter
You can now set rules to switch between different settings profiles based on a number of criteria. Do you want to throttle CPU-hungry processes when you’re actively working in Final Cut Pro, but let them run when you’re using other apps? Slow down an app when the CPU temperature goes above 70°C? Automatically hide browsers when you’re busy writing? You can do that and more.
And if you use macOS Focus modes, App Tamer includes a focus filter that lets you switch to a particular settings profile when you enter a Focus mode.
All App Settings in One Place
You can browse and modify all customized app settings in App Tamer’s Settings window, making it much easier to review and change how you’re managing each application.
UI and Feature Improvements
I know it’s a cliché, but there are too many to mention. The UI works more smoothly, is translucent and better organized (but no, it’s not been rewritten in Swift UI – App Tamer needs to be compatible with very old systems and has to work consistently across all of them). The contextual menu in the process list offers process details plus web search if you want to know more about a process. You can throttle background processes like menu bar apps. High-CPU warnings are smarter. And a ton of other stuff.
Check out the Beta Testing Page for the long list of changes and fixes.
Under the Hood Improvements
App Tamer’s process monitoring and control engine has been revamped, making it both more efficient and more robust under high CPU loads (because you’re trying to manage your maxed-out Mac, right?). It’s also compatible with the new M5 CPU architecture in the latest Macs, and manages multi-process apps like web browsers and the Spotlight indexer more effectively.
Version 6.2.7 of Default Folder X was released a few days ago, fixing some nagging problems in Save dialogs. The widened edit field for entering filenames was misbehaving, causing all text in the text field to be selected after using Default Folder X’s toolbar. It could also lose keyboard focus, forcing you to click in it or press the Tab key to resume editing the filename. And if you started typing before Default Folder X’s controls appeared, it would occasionally lose keystrokes. All these issues have been addressed, and I strongly recommend that everyone install this update so things work smoothly again for you.
In addition to fixing Save dialogs, this release adds a new contextual menu to the Finder for creating aliases, and sorts the menus in the Actions pane below Save dialogs so it’s easier to find the right script, workflow or shortcut. It also fixes a compatibility issue with the text expansion utility aText, and addresses problems with Default Folder X failing to open folders in the Finder on some systems.
This update is free if you’ve purchased a license for Default Folder X 6. Please update by downloading the new release from the What’s New page, or by choosing Check for Update from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar.
What happened to version 6.2.6?
I neglected to post about version 6.2.6 last month, which also fixed a number of issues – my apologies for that. It basically corrected a number of bugs that occurred infrequently, as well as adding a “Skip” button when you run into duplicate items while copying or moving multiple files or folders. Oh, and it sped things up in Open and Save dialogs.
Those changes are all rolled into 6.2.7, along with its bug fixes, so you’ll hopefully see less frequent updates. At least until we have to deal with macOS 27 betas 🙄
Version 6.2.5 of Default Folder X is available. While the release notes are fairly short, there’s quite a bit of depth to what’s been addressed.
First the easy ones: Bloom‘s developer has added a way for Default Folder X to reveal files and folders in Bloom — the new release of Default Folder X takes advantage of this. If you hold down the Command key and select any item from one of Default Folder X’s menus, it’ll reveal that item instead of opening it. If you’ve got Bloom selected as a substitute for the Finder in your DFX settings, it can now do so in Bloom.
The other important change is that Default Folder X is once again capable of opening your Applications folder in the Finder. In the latest release of macOS 26 Tahoe, Apple changed the Finder so that if you give it a URL to the Applications folder (file:///Applications), it just ignores it. I’m not sure if this is intentional (some kind of security measure?) of if it’s a bug, since asking it to open the Applications folder by supplying the path in AppleScript still works. At any rate, Default Folder X sidesteps the problem by not asking the Finder to open it via a URL.
<RANT>
Another “fix” in version 6.2.5 is enabling the OK button in Default Folder X’s license entry dialog even if you leave the Name field blank. This was necessitated by the fact that Tahoe’s Liquid Glass UI has such poor contrast that it’s virtually impossible to see that there IS a box there to enter your name.
So now you can enter your license number, click OK, and be scolded for not entering your name correctly. What progress! At least confused people won’t be stuck there wondering why the OK button is disabled.
</RANT>
Aside from enabling support for Enfocus Griffin, the rest of the changes in Default Folder X 6.2.5 are fixes for crashes that have come in through its automated crash reporter. The exciting bit is that a number of the crashes could be traced back to a couple of small bugs deep in Default Folder X’s handling of Open and Save dialogs. While the crashes were very few and far between (experienced by less than half a dozen users each), I’m very happy to have fixes in place to eliminate that little bit of unreliability.
As usual, this update is free for licensed Default Folder X 6 users. Just choose Check for Update from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar or visit the What’s New page to see the full release notes and download the update.
Default Folder X 6.2.4 is available, and despite the minor bump in the version number, there are some significant improvements.
New services in Finder contextual menus
There are new commands in the Finder’s contextual menu:
Default Folder X: Copy
Default Folder X: Move
Default Folder X: Contents
They let you use Default Folder X’s hierarchical menus to Copy or Move selected files and folders, or pop up a hierarchical menu showing the Contents of a selected folder so you can navigate within it. Here’s the Copy command in action (you may have to click on the image if your browser doesn’t auto-play animated GIFs):
These are really useful when organizing files or digging into deep folder hierarchies in the Finder. The one complication is that you have to explicitly turn the commands on before you can use them.
To enable these new Default Folder X “services,” go to System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services > Files and Folders, then look for the Default Folder X commands and turn on the checkboxes next to them:
If you’ve got fewer than 5 commands enabled in the Files and Folders category, they’ll be listed directly in the Finder’s contextual menu when you Control-click (or right-click) on a selected file or folder. If you’ve got 5 or more services enabled, they’ll be listed in a Services submenu. And yeah, I wish they weren’t so buried in System Settings – that’s a lot of clicks just to get to the place where you manage them.
Always-On Path Display in File Dialogs
In Tahoe and Sequoia, holding down the Option key in an Open or Save dialog briefly shows the path of the currently selected item:
Default Folder X now offers the option to have the path permanently displayed. Just turn on the option here:
If you use it, you’ll notice that the path isn’t actually always on – if you mouse over it to select something in the file listing, or if there’s a selected item underneath it in the list, the path will hide itself until it’s no longer in your way. On the other hand, if you actually want to click on one of the intermediate folders in the path to go to it, hold down the Option key to prevent the path from hiding.
More New Stuff!
If you’re an AppleScript user (which usually means you’ve been using a Mac for more than 20 years 🙄), the new menu-based Move, Copy and Contents services I described above are also scriptable. In Default Folder X’s AppleScript dictionary, you’ll find the new verbs MoveUsingMenu and CopyUsingMenu, plus the ShowMenu verb has been expanded to take a folder as an argument so that you can pop up a hierarchical menu showing that folder’s contents.
Also, keyboard shortcuts in Default Folder X can now include the Fn (Globe) key. And finally, if you hold down the command key while choosing a folder set from the Folder Sets submenu, Default Folder X will switch to the new folder set, then pop its menu back up so you can select a file or folder in that folder set.
Bug Fixes
I’ve fixed a slew of little issues that we’ve come across in the last month. Gone are the graphical glitches in the path menu at the top of file dialogs and the slightly jagged corners and incorrect corner radii on some windows (yeah, all those differently rounded corners in Tahoe are confusing for developers too).
Compatibility issues with PasteBot, Paste and other apps that pop up a window to insert text have been fixed. I worked around a bug in Adobe apps that was causing visual artifacts and strange behavior in Open and Save dialogs. And problems with Default Folder X “seeing” QSpace Pro windows will be resolved as soon as QSpace Pro is updated.
When you’ve got “Make the filename editing field wider” turned on in Save dialogs, you’ll no longer have to click twice on items in the sidebar or on the Delete button. Plus the numpad Enter key will work consistently and the Option key will display the path of the current folder as it should.
And finally, the built-in crash logging has uncovered a few rare (and some very weird) crashes that have been addressed in this update.
Getting the Update
As usual, this update is free if you’ve purchased a license for Default Folder X version 6 – just select “Check for Update” from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar. Or if you’re not already running Default Folder X (and are thereby wasting your time futzing with files and folders) go to the What’s New page for download links and a full change log.
Version 1.9.5 of Jettison was released last week, addressing a couple of significant bugs. Jettison wasn’t correctly saving its settings for notification sounds, which resulted in a sound not being played if you selected a new one in the settings and then quit and relaunched Jettison. This update also fixes a problem with some disks not remounting after waking the system from sleep. This only occurred occasionally, and depended on how busy the system was when a disk was ejected – there was a race condition that could result in the disk being ignored if the system was very busy.
So, if you’re running into either of these issues, definitely make sure you grab the update. And even if you’re not, there’s really no reason not to update. The changes in this release are very targeted, and the update is free if you’ve already bought a license for Jettison.
As usual, you’ll find download links and a full change history on the What’s New page. Or if you’re already running Jettison, just choose “Check for Update” from its menu in your menu bar.
Version 6.2.3 of Default Folder X is available, and it delivers an array of improvements and fixes (like you couldn’t have guessed that 😁).
Quick Search now searches for open and recently closed Finder windows in addition to favorites and recent files, folders and apps. The Open With menu – which you can access by holding down the Command key and mousing over any file in Default Folder X’s menus – supplies a less overwhelming list of available applications. And Tahoe users will now see a full complement of menu item icons in Default Folder X’s menu:
I know the icons are a little thing, but the unbalanced look was driving me nuts with just the icons that Tahoe provides by default.
There’s also more accurate tracking of recently opened files when you’re using Java apps, and all recent files are shown when using a file dialog presented by Keyboard Maestro‘s macro engine. The font size in Default Folder X’s menus is adjustable via a Terminal command, and you can specify a minimum size for file dialogs (check out the release notes for details on those).
On the bug fix front, delays that some people experienced in Open and Save dialogs have been eliminated. And a bug in Tahoe that caused various failures in Default Folder X has been dealt with – it prevented the path menu in file dialogs from updating, caused the Quick Search keyboard shortcut to work unreliably, and got DFX’s list of Finder windows out of sync, among other things. The gist of it is that the macOS Accessibility API stops reporting that a user interface item has disappeared, and that could get Default Folder X quite confused. DFX now works around those missing signals by using other methods to get (roughly) the same information.
As usual, this update is free to everyone with a license for Default Folder X version 6 (thank you again!), and there’s a 30-day free trial if you haven’t tried Default Folder X yet (you really should!). Download links and full a list of the changes in version 6.2.3 are available on the What’s New page.
Version 6.2.2 of Default Folder X is available, adding support for the Bloom file manager and tinted folders in menus. It also allows you to toggle between opening a folder in a new Finder window vs. an existing one, and fixes a number of bugs.
Bloom is an excellent replacement for the Finder that offers multi-pane views, auto-resizing columns, sync browsing and much more. Default Folder X’s Finder-click feature sees its windows and will open files and folders in Bloom instead of the Finder.
Version 6.2.2 will also colorize folders in its menus when you tag them with a color in the Finder or Default Folder X.
In addition, when choosing a folder from Default Folder X’s menus you can now hold down the Option key to toggle whether it opens in a new Finder window or in the frontmost window. This also applies to Bloom or any of the other supported Finder-substitutes. And because I took the Folder Sets menu out of the default menu configuration in version 6, Default Folder X will now offer to add the Folder Sets menu if you don’t have one when you switch between folder sets in the Settings.
Finally, there are a bunch of bug fixes. While several are specifically for Tahoe issues, a number apply to all versions of macOS, so this update is recommended for all Default Folder X users, regardless of which version of macOS you’re using.
As usual, this update is free for anyone who has purchased a license for version 6 of Default Folder X. Just choose Check for Update from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar, or go to the What’s New page for download links and release notes.
Version 1.9.4 of Jettison is available, delivering better handling of its notification sounds and fine-tuning a few details for Tahoe. If you’ve purchased a license for Jettison, this update is free.
The most visible change in this release is the new liquid glass icon for macOS 26, which is optimized for Tahoe’s dark and clear icon styles as well as the default appearance.
In addition, Jettison’s notification sounds are now displayed with their localized names, making them consistent with what you see in the Sound settings in System Settings. And when Jettison plays them, they’ll be played at the volume of the system alert sounds rather than the overall system sound volume.
Version 1.9.4 also addresses a few bugs, and will automatically quit the PhotosReliveWidget and com.apple.amp.devicesui processes before sleep if they’re being run by the system. That ensures that those processes won’t keep files open on any external drives and interfere with Jettison ejecting the drives.
Release notes and a download link are available on the What’s New page. Or if you’re already running Jettison, just select “Check for Update” from its menu in your menu bar.
Version 6.2 of Default Folder X is available, delivering support for macOS 26 Tahoe as well as addressing a number of issues. This update is free if you’ve already purchased a license for version 6, and you can just select “Check for Update” from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar to get it.
While the headline feature for version 6.2 is its compatibility with macOS 26, it also includes a number of other changes that benefit users running any supported version of macOS (10.13 – 26.0). Default Folder X’s buttons in the Finder’s toolbar are more attractive and work better, and issues with Adobe apps have been addressed. The “Open With” menu that was introduced in version 6.1.7 works more smoothly, and there are new AppleScript commands for integrating with other apps such as Alfred.
In addition to that, a number of bugs have been squashed and little details have been improved. They’re listed in the change history on the What’s New page, along with download links for version 6.2 in various languages.
As always, thanks for your support, suggestions and bug reports. We couldn’t do this without you!
The newest public beta version of Default Folder X 6.2 is available – you can download Default Folder X 6.2b6 here. It includes quite a few fixes for various appearance niggles that weren’t quite right in Tahoe, as well as some improvements that affect users of older versions of macOS.
First, there’s a bug fix for incorrect drag-and-drop behavior in the Quick Search window. If you dragged an item out of your Quick Search results – to move it in the Finder or to open it in a particular app – the Quick Search window would just stay on screen afterwards. It now closes as it should when you drag and drop an item out of it. This impacted all versions of macOS.
An improvement for versions of macOS from Big Sur up to and including Tahoe are the new Finder toolbar buttons.
They’re now proper toolbar buttons, and work much more smoothly than the old ones. If you’re running 6.2b6, I’d appreciate it if you turn them on in the General tab of your Default Folder X settings and give me your feedback.
There’s a full list of changes on the Default Folder X beta testing page. The overall takeaway is that this build is more polished in its support of Tahoe’s new look, while also providing bug fixes for all supported versions of macOS. If you’re already running a 6.2 beta, just choose “Check for Update” from Default Folder X’s menu in your menu bar to get the new build.
