[jzdziarski]

When I'm encoding video or doing something else CPU intensive, I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to limit the CPU WindowServer takes up. Normally it sits around 10%, which could mean 20 minutes of extra processing. Even with all but one or two windows open I still see high load. Any thoughts on this? Can you nice it?

[SMacTech]

Courtesy of iamBob :

ps -cxo command,pid | grep WindowServer | tail -c +18

Running that in the Terminal gives us the PID (process number) of the WindowServer.

sudo renice -10 PID

Gives the WindowServer a higher priority than anything else (options are 20 to -20 [low to high] so '-10' is well above the default 0).

renice is to 20