Java Daemon Watcher

Save up to 100 GB of RAM a week — without thinking about it.
Auto-kills idle Gradle & Kotlin daemons that pile up during development.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap grishaster80/tap
brew install --cask java-daemon-watcher

macOS Gatekeeper: Since the app isn't signed with an Apple Developer ID, macOS may block it on first launch. Run this to allow it:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/JavaDaemonWatcher.app

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/grishaster80/java-daemon-watcher.git
cd java-daemon-watcher/JavaDaemonWatcher
xcodebuild -scheme JavaDaemonWatcher -configuration Release build
cp -R ~/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/JavaDaemonWatcher-*/Build/Products/Release/JavaDaemonWatcher.app /Applications/

Requires macOS 14+, Xcode 15+, and a JDK.

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Why You Need This

Every Gradle/Kotlin build spawns daemon processes that linger for 3 hours, each consuming 500 MB – 2 GB of RAM. AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) make this worse — spawning dozens of daemons across Gradle versions. gradle --stop only covers one version and misses Kotlin daemons entirely.

Java Daemon Watcher runs in the background, detects idle daemons via CPU sampling, and clears them automatically.

• Safe — only targets Gradle & Kotlin daemons, never your IDE
• Zero maintenance — enable Launch at Login and forget about it
• Tracks stats — daemons cleared and RAM freed (today / all time)

Settings

Setting	Default	Options
Auto-clear idle daemons	On	On / Off
Clear after idle for	10 min	5m, 10m, 15m, 30m, 45m, 1h, 2h
Scan interval	60 sec	5s, 10s, 30s, 60s
Launch at login	Off	On / Off

License

MIT