Applescript get list of running apps?

Question

Applescript newbie question again :) I am trying to create a small applescript that will allow me to select multiple items from a list of currently running applications and

Answer 1

I wrote this following AppleScript code a few years back. I consider it to be a “Must Have” because I use it almost every single day.

This code will generate a list of Visible and Hidden application processes, allowing multiple items to be selected to kill their processes. The first items in the list will be visible application processes (not sorted alphabetically), then an empty list item (used to separate the visible from the hidden processes), and the remaining list items will be the hidden application processes (sorted alphabetically)

use framework "Foundation"
use scripting additions

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

listAllAppProcesses()

activate
set killApp to (choose from list ¬
    appsToKill with title "Choose The App To Kill" with prompt ¬
    "Choose The App/Apps To Kill" & linefeed & linefeed ¬
    & "The Empty List Item Separates The Visible From The Hidden Applications" 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 -9", pidList} as text)

on listAllAppProcesses()
    tell application "System Events"
        set visibleAppsToKill to name of every application process ¬
            where visible is true
        set invisibleAppsToKill to name of every application process ¬
            where visible is false
        set aList to ((NSArray's arrayWithArray:invisibleAppsToKill)'s ¬
            sortedArrayUsingSelector:"caseInsensitiveCompare:") as list
        set appsToKill to visibleAppsToKill & "" & aList
    end tell
end listAllAppProcesses