renicer

README

renicer

App to show nice values of processes and renice them. It is basically a wrapper around the ps and renice commands. It can also show manpages of commands that have them.

It has some extra functionality, namely that you can show the manpages of the listed processes. That uses the man and the mandoc command. It authorises on MacOS with osascript and on Linux with pkexec (using polkit).

Usage

Nice values dictate the scheduling priority of processes on *nixes. I.e. it changes how much process power the command or application gets from you CPU. The value ranges from -20 to 20, the lower the value, the higher the priority.

In this app you can change those values. Search for the name of the command you want in the search bar on top. You can also search for the process ID or the nice value if you want. Put in a new nice value and click on save. In a few cases you need superuser privileges, in those cases the app asks for authorisation.

Installing

On MacOS you can use brew:

brew install datwinz/formulae-and-casks/renicer

Otherwise you can download the zip file under "Releases". Unzip it and move it to your applications folder.

On Linux you can install with the Makefile:

# Install in ~/.local/
make user-install
# System install
sudo make install

Or move the renicer binary into your path.

Dependencies

Commands/binaries in $PATH

• ps
• renice
• man
• mandoc

MacOS

• osascript

Linux

• pkexec

Build

You need to install go on your platform of choice. You also need git. Then run:

git clone https://github.com/datwinz/renicer
cd renicer
go install fyne.io/fyne/v2/cmd/fyne@latest
fyne package --icon resources/renicer_light.png --name renicer
# FYNE_THEME=dark; fyne package --icon resources/renicer_dark.png --name renicer

Basic design outline

• Do 'ps ax -o pid,ni,comm' and make sort by name, process number nice value. I.i.r.c. Linux has different words for the options, but if I look it up the only difference is that in Linux you can also use cmd instead of comm.
• Put it in window something like this:

__________________________________________________
| pid | Process  | Ni |                          |
__________________________________________________
| 1   | init     | 0  |                          |
| 2   | process2 | 0  |      process5            |
| 3   | process3 | 0  |      Old value: 0        |
| 4   | process4 | 0  |      New value : -20     |
| 5   | process5 | 0  |                          |
| 6   | process6 | 0  |      Save                |
--------------------------------------------------

• Add search.
• Show man pages or something for processes on double click.
• Use polkit for linux and some privilege escalation for mac.