macOS employs a highly aggressive power management feature called “App Nap.” If an application is open but completely hidden behind other windows, or minimized to the Dock, macOS assumes you aren’t using it. To save battery life, the operating system quietly puts that background application to sleep, throttling its CPU usage to near zero.
While excellent for extending laptop battery life during casual web browsing, App Nap is disastrous for professional workflows. If you are rendering a massive video file in Premiere Pro, compiling code, or downloading a massive file via a custom FTP client, minimizing the window will cause macOS to throttle the process, turning a 10-minute job into a 3-hour slog. You can disable this aggressive power throttling system-wide.
How to Turn Off App Nap on a Mac
Because Apple removed the easy graphical toggle for App Nap in modern versions of macOS, you must disable it using a Terminal command.
- Open Finder, navigate to Applications > Utilities, and double-click to launch Terminal.
- Copy and paste the following exact command into the Terminal window:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAppSleepDisabled -bool YES - Press Enter to execute the command.
- You must completely restart any currently running applications (or simply reboot your entire Mac) for the new rule to apply.
Your Mac will no longer attempt to guess which applications deserve processor power. When you minimize a rendering engine, a compiler, or a download manager, it will continue to run at 100% full speed in the background until the job is done. Note that this will cause your Mac laptop’s battery to drain faster if you leave heavy applications open, as they will no longer be put to sleep.