What is the name of the Automator application process?

Question

I want to kill the process of the Automator application, but i can't find the name of it in the activity monitor.

Answer 1

The Automator.app's main process is called "Automator".

You should be able to Force Quit it from the Apple menu, or from right-clicking its Dock icon.

Of course, Automator workflows that are still running will be entirely separate processes.

Answer 2

I wrote an AppleScript a while back which helped me address the same kind of issue you are dealing with. In short, the code gives the options to choose from either visible or invisible application processes, in which you want killed. The code then uses the shell script command kill to terminate those processes by their process ID.

The advantage to using this rather than Activity Monitor is that this code allows for selecting multiple items or processes to kill in one shot. Activity Monitor only allows for selecting one process at a time.

With your circumstance, I would run this code and first choose to view the list of visible applications. If Automator is not in that list, I would choose to kill Finder in that list (which will kill Finder and relaunch it). Then check to see if that solves your problem. If not, then run the script again and choose to view the list of invisible application processes, selecting "WorkflowServiceRunner" (if it exists), "System Events", and "System UI Server" and kill those processes (which should kill them and relaunch them also)

You can run this following code directly in Script Editor.app or save the code in Script Editor.app as an application and just like any other app in Finder, just double click the file to launch it.

use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions

property appsToKill : missing value
property NSArray : a reference to current application's NSArray

activate
set theChoice to button returned of (display dialog ¬
    "WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIST VISIBLE OR INVISIBLE APP PROCESSES?" buttons ¬
    {"CANCEL", "VISIBLE", "INVISIBLE"} default button ¬
    "INVISIBLE" cancel button "CANCEL" with title ¬
    "  WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIST VISIBLE OR INVISIBLE APP PROCESSES?  " with icon ¬
    2 giving up after 10)

if theChoice is "INVISIBLE" then
    listInvisibleAppProcesses(false)
else if theChoice is "VISIBLE" then
    listInvisibleAppProcesses(true)
else if theChoice is "CANCEL" then
    return
else if theChoice is "" then
    return
end if

set aList to ((NSArray's arrayWithArray:appsToKill)'s ¬
    sortedArrayUsingSelector:"caseInsensitiveCompare:") as list

activate
set killApp to (choose from list ¬
    aList with title "Choose The App To Kill" with prompt ¬
    "Choose The App" OK button name "OK" cancel button name ¬
    "CANCEL" with multiple selections allowed)

set pidList to {}

if killApp is not false then
    tell application "System Events"
        repeat with i from 1 to count of killApp
            set thisItem to item i of killApp
            tell application process thisItem
                set thePID to unix id
                set end of pidList to thePID
            end tell
        end repeat
    end tell
else
    return
end if

set text item delimiters to space
do shell script ({"kill", pidList} as text)

on listInvisibleAppProcesses(trueOrFalse)
    tell application "System Events"
        set appsToKill to name of every application process ¬
            where visible is trueOrFalse
    end tell
end listInvisibleAppProcesses

Hopefully this will help with your situation but if it doesn't, saving this code as an application in Script Editor.app and using it rather than Activity Monitor... To kill applications... Should prove to be a handy tool in your arsenal.