Disable apps that use wifi?

To be effective you really need to be looking for anything that uses the network. The things you mention (Dropbox, Google Drive, Carbonite, and Outlook) have no idea whether you are on WiFi or not. They are simply looking for a network connection.

You are on a wild goose chase. The Mac OS X itself has a lot of pieces which look for a network connection. In today's world a lot of applications use the network.

To prevent apps from accessing the network, turn off or disconnect the network. Yes some of them are going to fall back into error code which causes network connection attempt retries.

madkoch wrote:

I know a lot of apps use the network in the background, but I'm not necessarily running them.

When I'm on a plane, or maybe working somewhere where I don't have wifi access (or don't want to bother tethering) and want to extend my battery life, I want to stop those apps that are essentially always running from endlessly checking for a connection -- what you call error code.

I hope you're wrong that it's a goose chase!

The amount of battery life caused by processes trying to connect when there's no network is minimal. However, you will gain some extra time by turning off WiFi, which will stop your Mac scanning for networks to join.

You said initially that you don't want to turn off Wifi. Why doesn't that do what you want?

I just turned off Wifi and checked Activity Monitor. Dropbox is using 0.6 Energy cycles, which is essentially nothing. You're not going to extend your battery life any further.

If you need Outlook open to consult your existing emails while your not connected, then you'll just have to live with the teeny amount of energy it uses to check for an internet connection avery now and again. Otherwise, quit the app.

I don't think you're going to extend your battery life meaningfully in this way.

I'm really not certain it will gain you anything, but you may be able to make an Applescript that sets them to go "offline," if that is possible. You could then create another script that turns them all back on.

Outlook has a "working offline" property but I don't know if it serves the purpose you need.

I don't use the other things so I don't know if they have such a setting or if it is scriptable.

madkoch wrote:

I hope you're wrong that it's a goose chase!

FWIW, it's more like a search for Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, etc.

Let me think about this issue… I know, quit DropBox, Google Drive and Outlook.

The closest I can think of are applications firewalls like Radio Silence: https://radiosilenceapp.com

As always: I do not recommend using it, I'm just letting you know that it exists.

(Next question: how to uncheck "solved" on my post above!!)

You can't uncheck it.