How do I put individual Mac applications into sleep mode?

Solution 1:

You shouldn't need to do this on a well-behaved system. If you have specific issues with certain apps, please post separate questions for each of them so that we can find targeted ways of getting them to behave better.

Nevertheless, it is easy to suspend and resume any process:

1. Determine the PID (process ID) of the app you want to suspend. You can do this via Activity Monitor, ps, top, or whatever method you want.

2. Send a SIGSTOP to that process. This will suspend the process so that it will get no CPU time. E.g., if the PID is 12345,

   kill -STOP 12345

3. When you want to resume using the app, send it a SIGCONT:

   kill -CONT 12345

You can also use killall to specify a process by name rather than PID. Note that, by default, this will send that signal to any process you own matching the process name. See man killall for more details.