Unpause application in Mac OS X

I tried parsing a gigantic XML file and I ended up running out of virtual memory. The OS put all my applications on pause and gave me a screen to shutdown applications to free more space. I killed the XML parsing application and now have tons of space but I can't resume my paused applications anymore. What should I do?

Xster

Posted 2010-03-10T07:16:10.280

Reputation: 1 913

– cregox – 2016-02-04T12:04:24.957

Answers

Find your paused app's process ID (using either Activity Monitor or ps -ax | grep ), then issue it the CONT signal using "kill" in the terminal (don't worry, "kill" is misnamed, it just sends a signal to an app - it's called kill because the default signal is QUIT)

% ps -ax | grep Safari
  461 ??        61:22.30 /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari -psn_0_180268
% kill -CONT 461
%

AvramD

Posted 2010-03-10T07:16:10.280

Reputation: 406

6thanks for the hint! but it lead me into this similar solution: simply using killall -CONT Safari - feel free to add this to your answer! ;) – cregox – 2011-04-13T15:46:57.880

2Is there an easy way to find out which processes have been paused? – asmeurer – 2012-05-24T23:04:11.720

2Any advice on a situation where Terminal is in paused state? – Jawa – 2012-12-23T12:05:16.113

@Jawa - open iterm if you have it, or X11, to get at the terminal some other way. Alternatively, ssh in from another machine. But these are workarounds, I'd love a better solution – keflavich – 2012-12-23T19:40:40.143

To un-pause all applications, run this command in Terminal:

pkill -CONT -u $UID

or (as suggested here):

kill -CONT -1

To un-pause the specific app (such as Chrome), try:

kill -CONT $(pgrep Chrome)

Consider adding the following alias into your rc files (such as ~/.bashrc):

alias unpause="pkill -CONT -u $UID"

So next time you may just run: unpause.

kenorb

Posted 2010-03-10T07:16:10.280

Reputation: 16 795

or just use kill -CONT -1 as explained here: https://superuser.com/questions/1076932/un-pause-all-paused-processes-osx

– cregox – 2017-05-09T10:43:30.330