Marco Arment just launched his first Mac app, Quitter. It allows you to hide or quit any Mac app after a selected period of inactivity. This could be a great way to extend battery life!
@jkent2910 turns out 'periods of inactivity' is defined as 'not being actively used'. So your browser downloading the big file gets quited because its not the active app, though its not being inactive. Be careful out there ;-)
Honest question, why make use of this in place of CMND + Q? @jkent2910 sharing that Spotify quit while playing is enough for me to turn away from this.
The idea is useful, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The definition of "inactive" seems to be "you haven't clicked on a window in the alloted time", so Zoom meetings get killed in the middle, while you are VERY MUCH active. The app needs a much better definition of "inactivity" to fix this problem. Clicking on a window qualifies as activity but so should having a window in the forefront. So should audio (or video) output. The best case would be if you could check various checkboxes to include various things on a per-app basis to define what qualifies as activity in that particular app.
Of course I would gladly pay for these added features.
So why do I downvote a free app? Because it isn't doing what it promised. If instead of "inactivity" the description said "quits apps you're not clicking on" then it would be living up to the promise, but it would be clearer to people that it's not necessarily useful. Something that quits inactive apps would be very useful, but this is not really what any of us are expecting.
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