A lightweight macOS process manager utility. Lists the processes belonging to the current user, shows PID, CPU%, and memory usage, and lets you terminate them with a single click. A tabbed UI adds developer-focused cleanup and resource monitoring.

• Real-time process list (refreshes every 3s)
• Works for whichever user is running the app (no hardcoded username)
• Collapses helper/child processes into their main (parent) process, aggregating CPU and memory — e.g. Spotify and its helpers appear as a single entry
• Shows real application icons where available for easier recognition
• Filter processes by name
• Sort by CPU usage, memory, name, or PID
• One-click process termination (SIGTERM, falls back to SIGKILL)
• Native macOS notifications when a process sustains high CPU for an extended period
• Menu bar (tray) icon — closing the window keeps the app running in the menu bar
• Runs at login via LaunchAgent
• Dark, translucent UI inspired by Raycast

The main process list described above.

• Lists processes listening on notable dev ports (defaults: 3000–3003, 4000, 4200, 5000/5001, 5173/5174, 5555, 6006, 8000/8001, 8080/8081, 8090, 8443, 8888, 9000/9090/9091), showing PID, command, and port, each with a kill button.
• Auto-kills stale dev servers (node, python, java/mvn, rust/cargo, go, ruby, deno, bun, …) owned by the current user that have been running past the configured age (default 12 hours).
• Never touches: processes owned by other users or the system, Copilot CLI / SDK, node-based MCP servers (github, context7, work_iq, fabric, seismic, azure, kusto, revenue, …), IDEs (VS Code, Obsidian, Chrome, Slack, Teams, OrbStack) or non-dev apps (Spotify, Handy, …). Detection is conservative — when in doubt it does not kill.
• Re-scans ports and re-runs cleanup on configurable intervals (defaults: every 5s / 10 min), plus a manual "Run cleanup now" button, and shows a summary of what was found and cleaned.
• Fully configurable from the Settings card — every detection input is exposed and editable, with changes persisted across launches:
  • Toggle auto-kill on/off and pick the kill-after age (1/6/12/24/48/72h).
  • Pick the cleanup and port-scan intervals.
  • Add/remove watched ports, dev runtimes, dev-server indicators (command-line signatures), and protected substrings (never killed).
  • Reset to defaults restores every value.

• Top 10 processes by CPU and top 10 by memory (one line each) with a kill button.
• A trend chart of the current top consumers' CPU or memory usage over a rolling 12h window, sampled every 10 minutes by default (interval configurable: 5/10/15/30/60 min).
• Lists and chart legend are always ordered by the process consuming the most.

• Top 10 processes by energy impact (macOS top POWER metric), aggregated per parent process, each with a kill button.
• A trend chart of the current top energy consumers over a rolling 12h window, sampled every 10 minutes by default (same configurable interval as Top consumers).
• List and chart legend are always ordered by the process consuming the most energy.

• Watches for processes (parent-collapsed) sustaining CPU above a threshold and fires native macOS notifications when one stays hot for several consecutive checks — mirroring the cpu-watchdog.sh / cpu-hog-monitor.sh shell scripts.
• Defaults: 90% threshold, alert after 3 consecutive checks, every 5 min (~15 min sustained). Threshold (80/85/90/95%), interval, and consecutive-check count are all configurable.
• After alerting, the per-process counter resets to avoid spam (it re-alerts after the same number of further consecutive sightings).
• Shows currently-offending processes with their consecutive count and a kill button, plus an in-app recent-alerts history.
• Appends to ~/Library/Logs/cpu-watchdog.log, trimmed to the last 500 lines.

• Shows the running version and the latest published release, with a manual Check for updates button.
• Auto-checks on launch and on a configurable interval (default every 1 hour, selectable 15m–24h); when a newer build exists, a banner appears at the top of the window.
• Update automatically toggle: when enabled, new releases are downloaded and installed as soon as they're found, so you're always on the latest version with no action required.
• One-click Download & install: fetches the new binary, validates it, replaces the user-owned ~/bin/KillSwitch (no admin prompt — the install path is in your home directory), reloads the LaunchAgent, and relaunches.
• Uninstall KillSwitch button: removes the binary and login LaunchAgent (same as uninstall.sh), then quits — no terminal needed.
• See docs/auto-update.md for the full release + update flow.

KillSwitch lives in the macOS menu bar like Caffeine. A status item (⚡ icon) sits in the top menu bar with a dropdown:

• Show KillSwitch — brings the window back to the front (restores the Dock icon).
• Quit KillSwitch — fully exits the app.

Closing the main window with the red close button does not quit the app — it hides the window and drops the Dock icon, leaving only the menu bar icon. Re-open it from the menu bar item (or by clicking the Dock icon if visible). To fully quit, use Quit KillSwitch from the menu bar.

• macOS 13+ (Ventura or later)
• Swift 5.9+
• Xcode Command Line Tools

One line — downloads the latest prebuilt release and sets it up to run at login (no sudo, no source checkout needed):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbianchidev/kill-switch/main/install.sh | bash

This downloads the latest KillSwitch binary, verifies its SHA-256, installs it to ~/bin/KillSwitch, and loads a LaunchAgent so it starts at login. Re-running it upgrades an existing install — handy if you're stuck on an old build (see Updating).

From a checkout, install.sh builds with Swift automatically:

chmod +x install.sh uninstall.sh
./install.sh            # builds with Swift when run inside the repo

Force a mode with KILLSWITCH_INSTALL_MODE=source or KILLSWITCH_INSTALL_MODE=release.

This will:

1. Build (or download) the release binary
2. Copy it to ~/bin/KillSwitch (no sudo required)
3. Install a LaunchAgent so it starts at login

From the app, open the Updates tab and click Uninstall KillSwitch (removes the binary and login LaunchAgent, then quits). Or from a terminal:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mbianchidev/kill-switch/main/uninstall.sh | bash
# or, from a checkout:
./uninstall.sh

Released builds update themselves: open the Updates tab (or wait for the launch check) and click Download & install when a newer version is offered. The updater overwrites whatever binary the LaunchAgent launches, so the new version is the one that comes back after the relaunch.

Every push to main is automatically published as a GitHub Release (auto-incrementing semver, e.g. v1.1.1) with the compiled binary attached, and the running app compares its embedded version against the latest release. See docs/auto-update.md for details.

To update a source checkout manually instead:

./update.sh

swift build -c release
.build/release/KillSwitch

• Swift 5.9
• SwiftUI + Swift Charts (trend graph)
• AppKit (NSWorkspace) for application icons; NSStatusItem for the menu bar (tray) icon
• macOS process APIs (ps, lsof, top)
• osascript for native macOS notifications and privileged self-update
• URLSession (async/await) + GitHub Releases API for in-app updates
• GitHub Actions for continuous releases on every push to main
• CodeQL static analysis (advanced setup, manual Swift build) — see docs/ci-security.md
• LaunchAgent for auto-start