Overview

Peek-a-Boo Overview

Looking for a Peek-a-Boo that runs on OS X?

Peek-a-Boo 2 has been released for Mac OS X. These pages, dedicated to Peek-a-Boo 1.6, are for MacOS 9 users.

What is new in Peek-a-Boo 1.6?

Peek-a-Boo 1.6 offers a new Apple Event interface for programmers. You can learn more in our article about this interface.

CSM Pack and ramBunctious both use different aspects of this interface.


Peek-a-Boo 1.6 allows you to start typing a process name and it selects that process. This feature has been frequently requested, and we're glad to announce its availability.

Peek-a-Boo 1.6 also allows left- and right-arrow keypresses to cycle through processes in the order that they're located in memory. This can make it easier to select specific processes when you're trying to make a contiguous range of memory available.

Several minor bugs have been fixed.

What is Peek-a-Boo?

Peek-a-Boo is a utility to monitor and manipulate all running processes. You can watch how much CPU time each process uses, adjust the CPU time requested by each process, and look at any piece of information available through the Process Manager.

The Process Manager (available in MacOS System 7 and later) maintains a dozen or so pieces of information about each running process (normally an application); many fine utilities show a subset of this information.

My personal motivation for writing Peek-a-Boo was that no existing utility showed precisely the subset of Process Manager information I needed to know at a given time. So I made sure that Peek-a-Boo can show any piece of information available via the Process Manager; preferences can be edited to view only those pieces of information you need. And, with the Special Technology of Peek-a-Boo ST, you can now adjust the priorities of processes to customize which processes get more processor time.

If you want to experience Peek-a-Boo with Special Technology, please download it.

You may use Peek-a-Boo for two weeks; if you find it useful, you must pay the registration fee. You may register online, or use the included "Register Peek-a-Boo" application to do the right thing.

A Japanese version of Peek-a-Boo is available.