Killing processes for real

[climberforlife]

Ok, firstly let me apologize if this is not the appropriate place for this or if it has already been solved; I looked and I couldn't find anything.

So I am getting seriously pissed off at my processes, I can't seem to make them stay dead. When I go to activity monitor I see processes like spotifywebhelper running while I don't have spotify running and I would like to close them. So I try to just quit them via activity monitor and it quits, but comes back more or less instantly. So I try to force quit, same thing; so I tried to kill the process in the shell, no dice.

I'm pretty sure my mac is stretched to the limit as it is with resources and I want these programs to stay dead when I kill them. Does anyone know how to do this?

 

[S.B.G]

What percentage is your CPU running at? Under normal circumstances, one shouldn't be having to kill processes to have a decent running computer. The ones you're killing are probably necessary services that need to run which is why they keep restarting.

 

[jav6454]

Do you still have Spotify running (in this case)? If so, that will keep bringing SpotifyHelper back online.

 

[climberforlife]

Do you still have Spotify running (in this case)? If so, that will keep bringing SpotifyHelper back online.

Spotify itself is not running.

 

[jav6454]

Spotify itself is not running.

Have you checked on the items that run upon start up?

 

[climberforlife]

What percentage is your CPU running at? Under normal circumstances, one shouldn't be having to kill processes to have a decent running computer. The ones you're killing are probably necessary services that need to run which is why they keep restarting.

Assume I don't have a decent computer. I don't need or want stuff from third party programs I'm not using running in the background 24/7

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Have you checked on the items that run upon start up?

I did not, and the processes I've been having trouble with are from them. Thanks man.

 

[S.B.G]

Assume I don't have a decent computer. I don't need or want stuff from third party programs I'm not using running in the background 24/7

Check out this manual step by step guide to fully delete a program from OS X. Perhaps that will help you get rid of those unwanted programs and stop their processes from running.

 

[smithrh]

OP may want to mention what processes he's not happy with so some more specific feedback could be given.

Having said that, in just about any modern OS, there will be a facility to enable developers to have their processes automatically launch or re-spawn upon death.

For whatever processes you're talking about, the OS is watching for that process to die, and once it does, it restarts it. It doesn't really matter how it dies, it could be through a legitimate crash, or through you killing the process. Basically the OS has been programmed by the developer of that app to keep it up and running, so you're fighting a fight you won't win with either kill or Activity Monitor.

You have a few options:

* Put up with the process

* As SandboxGeneral says, you can remove the application entirely(1)

* You can modify the behavior of the OS for that process(2)

1: There are a few devs out there (I'm looking at you, Adobe) that go quite a long way in obfuscating what process is really running and where it was launched from. Adobe actually creates a temporary application and runs that, and deletes it when it's done. Haven't figure out why they feel that necessary.

2: I've never learned launchd, so I'm of no help there. I'm more old school (rc.init, etc), and I don't program very much any more. Sorry.

If you really don't like spare processes hanging around, pay special attention when apps ask for your password when installing; that's a major clue that they're going to make changes to launchd's configuration.

 

[richard.mac]

Great info above, but I'll cut right to the chase, stopping the spotifywebhelper from running without uninstalling Spotify, as that's what you want to do.

- In Spotify's preferences, disable "Allow Spotify to be started from the Web".
- Delete "com.spotifywebhelper.plist" from /Users/yourName/Library/LaunchAgents (this Launch Agent causes it to reopen)
- Quit Spotify and log out and back in.

However, leaving spotifywebhelper running will only use few resources, as it just waits for you to open Spotify music links in a browser.

 

[smithrh]

I'm pretty sure my mac is stretched to the limit as it is with resources ....

OP - there are ways of finding out if your Mac is really at it's limits (CPU, memory, etc)... What's making you feel that it's being stretched?

What I didn't mention in my other post is that most of these processes (daemons, "helpers") aren't likely contributing to loading down your Mac.

While I don't like them either (and I've killed a few of them that have irked me), I've generally made my peace with them.