Peek-a-Boo is no longer being supported.


Peek-a-Boo Version History

Peek-a-Boo 2.9.3

  • Stability fixes.
  • Improved Process List sorting.

Peek-a-Boo 2.9.2

  • Stability fixes.

Peek-a-Boo 2.9.1

  • Fixed several stability and build issues in Peek-a-Boo ST (that were not relevant to the Mac App Store version of Peek-a-Boo).

Peek-a-Boo 2.9

  • A Mac App Store version of Peek-a-Boo has been created, which includes most of the features of Peek-a-Boo ST (the non Mac App Store version).
  • Several user-interface bugs when running under Mac OS X 10.7 Lion have been fixed.
  • Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is now required.
  • Peek-a-Boo is now an Intel-only application (with no PowerPC support).
  • Several minor documentation fixes.
  • Some minor user-interface cleanup.
  • Miscellaneous bugs have been fixed.


Peek-a-Boo 2.8.5

  • Improvements in Process Throb for the “speed” of 64-bit processes.
  • Increasing stability and better internal handling of the list of processes.
  • Some clarifications in filenames and descriptions of UI features.

Peek-a-Boo 2.8.4

Peek-a-Boo 2.8.3

  • Showing each CPU core’s usage in the System Information window (Command-3).
  • Trying out HUD windows for various process information windows.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes and deprecated API cleanup.

Peek-a-Boo 2.8.2

  • Fixed an (embarrassing) oversight where Peek-a-Boo failed on some Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger systems.
  • Other minor bug fixes in Process Throb.

Peek-a-Boo 2.8.1

  • Fixed a couple bugs in Process Throb when running on Snow Leopard.
  • The Process List window has had minor cosmetic updates.
  • Log file bug fix: no more spurious negative numbers.
  • Other minor bug fixes and updates.

Peek-a-Boo 2.8

Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) was the catalyst for a number of enhancements in Peek-a-Boo 2.8.
  • Many processes in Snow Leopard run in 64-bit mode (on supported machines), so 64-bit processes are now detected.
  • Memory usage of processes, especially that of 64-bit processes, is now tracked more accurately.
  • The Process Throb window works better with 64-bit processes.
  • Snow Leopard has changed some of the underpinnings of process management; Peek-a-Boo 2.8 has been updated to work properly with these system changes.


Peek-a-Boo 2.7.11

  • Improved crash reporting. (We hope crashes are rare, but if they do happen we would like to hear about them.)
  • Miscellaneous minor usability enhancements

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.10

  • Underlying architectural enhancements should increase stability.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.9

  • Process Throb icons can now be customized so their size can correspond either to the process CPU usage or the process memory usage. (The Process Throb icon velocity then corresponds to the other attribute.)
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.8

  • Stability fixes
  • Minor bug fixes and enhancements

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.7

  • Tool tip enhancements
  • Minor performance improvements
  • Other miscellaneous minor bug fixes

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.6

  • Window borders have been eliminated; they now have a nicer look.
  • Minor bug fix: smooth out some rare quirky behavior in the autoupdate mechanism.
  • Minor bug fixes to the personalization mechanism.
  • Fix occasional crash at quit.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.5

  • The Process List view can now show the number of threads in each process.
  • Peek-a-Boo has a new icon.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.4

  • Due to popular demand, the ability to invoke sample has been added.
  • Higher-resolution icon has been added to help support OS X 10.5 Leopard’s resolution independence.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.3

  • Improved CPU Usage window readability when CPU usage is level.
  • Minor documentation enhancements.
  • Other miscellaneous user experience enhancements

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.2

  • Leopard-related fix: update process ID validity check to include Leopard’s range.
  • Minor Leopard-related fixes.
  • Minor System Information Window fixes.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7.1

  • Each Process Throb icon’s velocity is based on the virtual memory it uses. This makes memory-intensive processes more obvious since they are moving more quickly.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements.

Peek-a-Boo 2.7

  • Peek-a-Boo 2.7 windows now look more consistent.
  • Several Leopard-related refinements.
  • The memory column in the process list window can now be sorted by physical memory in addition to virtual memory; see the preferences pane to set this.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes and enhancements.


Peek-a-Boo 2.6.9

  • The Process List view introduced a new indicator icon, the rosetta indicator to show if a process is using Rosetta emulation.
  • Miscellaneous minor bugs fixed.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.8

  • More user interface artwork from Fernando Lins.
  • The Process List view introduced a new indicator icon, the bubble which indicates whether a process has been idle recently. This can be useful if you only want to watch processes that have been active.
  • Several documentation enhancements.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.7

  • Paths with some unicode characters were causing minor problems. This has been fixed.
  • Add colorization of Process Throb icons; this helps make it obvious when new processes are being spawned.
  • Occasionally fullscreen Process Throb icons would have an annoying flash. This bug has been fixed.
  • Download size reduced another 10%.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.6

  • Process Throb now “badges” some processes.
  • Daemon interface improved.
  • Miscellaneous bugs fixed.
  • Download size optimized; over 30% saved.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.5

  • Fixed a long-standing bug where adding columns to (or removing columns from) the Process List window would sometimes resize other columns.
  • Fixed a recently-added bug where displaying the Rosetta information could cause some windows (such as CPU Usage windows) not show up properly.
  • Peek-a-Boo now uses the subversion revision number along with agvtool to maintain a canonical build number for each release.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.4

  • Peek-a-Boo can now show whether a process is running under Rosetta emulation. See the
    “View->Built-in Items->rosetta emulation” menu item.
  • The Peek-a-Boo Helper Daemon was improved:
    • The helper daemon is now a universal binary.
    • The optimization level was cranked up.
    • These changes will require authentication to use the new helper daemon.
  • The documentation pages were cleaned up.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.3

  • Peek-a-Boo has a vastly improved new icon! Thanks Fernando Lins for your outstanding work!
  • Minor bug fix: improved icon selection for icons in Process List window.
  • Minor bug fix: documentation shows correct cpu usage windows.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.2

  • Bug fix: turning PS information on and off has been unreliable for the last few releases. Version 2.6.2 reliably shows the contents of the “View->PS Available Items” menu.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6.1

  • Peek-a-Boo's CPU Usage windows are now Cocoa windows; the last vestiges of Carbon have now been removed from Peek-a-Boo.
  • minor bug fix: refine escalating-kill mechanism.
  • minor bug fix: system information window occasionally wasn't activated properly; this has been fixed.

Peek-a-Boo 2.6

  • New System Information view added; this is a convenient small floating window that shows system-wide CPU usage, memory usage, and virtual memory status.
  • Use OS-supplied striped background for table view.
  • Nagging severity reduced, and escalation mechanism tweaked; this should keep the nags from making Peek-a-Boo unusable.


Peek-a-Boo 2.5.8

  • When the Process List window is frontmost, start typing the name of a process. That process, now, will be selected. This makes is very convenient when you know the name of a process to get it selected ASAP.
  • Choosing the Process Throb window from Peek-a-Boo’s File menu when Process Throb is already in fullscreen mode will now switch to the normal window mode as expected.
  • Fixed a memory leak in the fullscreen Process Throb code.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.7

  • The fullscreen Process Throb changes from version 2.5.6 had a bug when cycling between multiple monitors. This bug has been fixed.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.6

  • Fullscreen mode of Process Throb has been improved in a seemingly subtle but surprisingly useful way: it now no longer cycles between an overlay mode and a desktop mode; rather, the (single) fullscreen mode is in the desktop layer with an adjustable opacity for the overlay layer. The Preferences will allow you to adjust this opacity.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.5

  • Several miscellaneous bugs have been fixed:
    • Occasionally Process Throb icons would not display correctly for OS X Applications; this has been fixed.
    • Better default values in several places:
      • Better default opacity for fullscreen Process Throb.
      • More sensible default columns the first time Peek-a-Boo is run.
      • Improved default set of toolbar items the first time Peek-a-Boo is run.
    • A handful of cosmetic problems, seen most frequently on 64-bit machines, was fixed. Now processes that use more than 2 GB of virtual memory are displayed properly.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.4

  • Collecting process information is now performed on a secondary thread, for a more responsive user interface, particularly the Process List window.
  • The Process List CPU usage column now uses color-coding when a process uses more than 100% of (a single) processor. Yellow indicates between 100% and 200%, and red indicates greater than 200%.
  • An NSLevelIndicator is used in the toolbar for a better-looking system CPU usage indicator.
  • Fixed bug where the component to extract information from Classic processes would fail occasionally.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.3

  • The Process List now uses NSLevelIndicator views for the CPU graphs.
  • Version 2.5.3 requires OS X 10.4 (Tiger)

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.2

  • Sparkle autoupdate mechanism added.
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5.1

  • Minor bug fixes and enhancements:
    • Adopt new color scheme, both to increase consistency with other utilities and to “cool down” the look of the Process List window.
    • Use NSLevelIndicator on Tiger and later in Process Information window.

Peek-a-Boo 2.5



Peek-a-Boo 2.4.3

  • Process Throb’s fullscreen mode has been enhanced. Now instead of simply toggling between fullscreen on the main screen and the normal Process Throb window, in 2.4.3 and later F7 cycles from fullscreen mode to desktop mode for each attached screen before cycling back to the normal window.
  • Endianness fix for OSTypes.
  • Fixed a bug introduced in 2.4.2 where CFM applications and Classic applications displayed less user-friendly names.

Peek-a-Boo 2.4.2

  • Peek-a-Boo now extracts a more user-friendly name for Dashboard Widgets (for example, it shows “Calendar.wdgt” instead of DashboardClient). Thanks Richard Fattic for the suggestion.

Peek-a-Boo 2.4.1

  • Peek-a-Boo’s process throb window has a nifty enhancement. You can make idle processes disappear from the window by turning off “always show idle processes” in the preferences panel.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes.

Peek-a-Boo 2.4

  • Peek-a-Boo now features an informative memory column in the process list window. This column allows you to tell at a glance which processes are using memory, and how much of each process’s memory usage is physical RAM and how much is virtual (paged-out) memory.
  • Friendlier names for pieces of process information (pid info fields); for example, “pid_p_starttime” is now “start time” in the “View->Built-in Items” menu as well as the column header for the process list window.


Peek-a-Boo 2.3.8

  • Peek-a-Boo is now a universal binary.
    • Upside: runs natively on Intel-based Macintoshes.
    • Downside: slightly larger download.
  • Peek-a-Boo now requires at least OS X 10.3.9.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.7

  • CPU Usage History windows now show the current CPU percentage being used by a process.
  • Minor bug fixes:
    • virtual memory calculations now omit shared regions (as ps and top do).
    • log files now use script-friendlier format.
    • cleaning up detritus in /var/tmp.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.6

  • Contextual menu added to process list window.
  • If you click near a process in the process throb window, that process is selected in the process list window.
  • Minor bug fixes, including fixing quirks when closing and reopening the process list window.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.5

  • New pid info fields added:
    • pid_syscalls_unix
    • pid_csw (context switches)
  • Several internal optimizations.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.4

  • New addition to the memory graph shows “wired” memory.
  • New pid info fields added:
    • pid_terminated_user_time
    • pid_terminated_system_time

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.3

  • The logic for figuring out the total active time was omitting the time used by threads in a process that have already terminated. This is important for maintaining an accurate value over the life of the process, and this oversight has been fixed.
  • A few new pid info fields were added:
    • pid_suspend_count
    • pid_policy

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.2

  • Peek-a-Boo inserts a new gentler “kill” into its sequence of escalating techniques to quit a process.
  • A Help menu bug was fixed.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3.1

  • You can now buy Peek-a-Boo using PayPal!
  • Documentation is now available from Peek-a-Boo’s Help menu.

Peek-a-Boo 2.3

  • Logging windows are now Cocoa-based.
  • Halt/Continue feature added. This powerful feature sends a SIGSTOP signal to the process, freezing it until it is continued. Thanks for suggesting this feature, Chuck Bouldin!
  • User Interface improved for displaying current priorities better: new indicator column shows current priority if it’s been changed from normal. Also indicates if a process is in a halted state.
  • Fixed rare crash.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes.


Peek-a-Boo 2.2.4

  • The system memory graph on the process list window now indicates inactive memory with barbershop striping.

Peek-a-Boo 2.2.3

  • Fix rare deadlock when opening Process Throb window; thanks again Gordon Alley for helping out with the diagnostics.
  • Bug fix in extracting PS information; now correctly displays PS information that includes spaces.

Peek-a-Boo 2.2.2

  • Logging interval was mistakenly always one second; now correctly obeys the user-set preference.

Peek-a-Boo 2.2.1

  • Preferences added to control the appearance of the full-screen Throb Window more completely:
    • Parent/child connector lines can be omitted
    • Opacity of fullscreen overlay window can be adjusted
    • Opacity of overlay window’s background can be adjusted

Peek-a-Boo 2.2

  • Added fullscreen mode to process throb window.
  • Added hotkey (F7) for displaying fullscreen throb window.
  • Miscellaneous minor bug fixes.


Peek-a-Boo 2.1.2

  • Stabilized some inopportune initialization timing.
  • Finer granularity handling autorelease pools; helps manage memory better.

Peek-a-Boo 2.1.1

  • Fixed bugs where rare 24-bit application icons would cause crashes. Thanks Gordon Alley for your patience and help in diagnosing this problem!
  • Solidified some multithreading issues.

Peek-a-Boo 2.1

  • Introduced Process Throb window
  • Minor bug fixes, including:
    • Process List closing/reopening glitches resolved
    • improved memory usage
    • documentation rework


Peek-a-Boo 2.0.2

  • Nagging intensity lowered for demo period
  • More robust pathname logic
  • Better default field width for pid column
  • Added check to verify that necessary Darwin tools are available

Peek-a-Boo 2.0.1

  • Minor bug fixes, including:
    • better clipboard personalization key detection
    • cosmetic menu discrepancy

Peek-a-Boo 2.0

  • First OS X release.