# App Tamer

6 Hacker News commenters recommended App Tamer and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People use it to cap CPU use of background apps and daemons such as Backblaze, which gives them back a responsive Mac. The main caveat is that it doesn't tame everything.

## Why people recommend it

- Limits CPU use of background apps (3 comments): "now using App Tamer to prevent the processes from continuing to use multiple cores" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50126109)) "after I used App Tamer to set it to not use more than 20% of CPU resources" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46703969)) "It lets you jail background apps at 10% cp" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47552751))
- Stops background daemons hogging the machine (2 comments): "Useful for keeping Backblaze and other daemons from taking over" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50132417)) "it's given me my computer back for years now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46651022))
- Works as needed from a serious developer (2 comments): "that's quite a neat bit of kit. St. Clair does serious work" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50133381)) "It's working great so far, just does what I need it to do." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50137500))

## What people warn about

- Doesn't control every process (1 comments): "helping a bit, but it doesn't allow me to tame everything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50122133))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Nightwatch](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nightwatch.md): 8 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.stclairsoft.com/AppTamer/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "App Tamer", https://hackerapproved.com/p/app-tamer/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).