This article describes some of the commonly used features of Activity Monitor, a kind of task manager that allows you see how apps and other processes are affecting your CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network usage.
- The total amount of memory being used by apps and their processes. Typically, this is memory that’s necessary to support your computer’s core functions. To make more memory available for other processes, OS X will sometimes compress data in RAM,.
- Mac Application Memory is the part of your system that is designed to handle running applications. Usually, when you download and install a software, it gets placed on your internal Hard Drive. It is what is commonly called the disk space. It is also where you keep your other files for storage.
Open Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it.
Best free software for mac. 2.Free Screen Video recorder is one video capture software that is good and useful too in Windows 10. It is powered by various latest techniques which help you share your high-quality tutorials with fans or subscribers.Features:.
Feb 24, 2016 Some apps don’t close when you just click the red X button: the window is minimized, and the app continues running and consuming precious memory. Apps that launch on startup By default, some of your apps are set to start up with your Mac. The Mac maintenance and security app called Combo Cleaner is a one-stop tool to detect and remove “Your computer is low on memory” virus. This technique has substantial benefits over manual cleanup, because the utility gets hourly virus definition updates and can accurately spot even the newest Mac. One of the best apps to optimize Mac’s performance is Memory Cleaner. The application is designed to speed up Mac by clearing inactive RAM. The app displays memory usage by apps, disk usage and allows to close or force quit separate apps with a high CPU usage. These might also interest you. Mar 13, 2019 As for what that all means, App Memory is what’s actually being used by apps and processes, Wired memory is what’s been reserved for apps and can’t be freed up, and Compressed is inactive memory. Show All Running Apps On Mac Using Force Quit Applications Manager. Another method to check all the Running apps and programs on your Mac is through the Force Quit applications manager on Mac. Click on the Apple icon in the top menu bar of your Mac and then click on Force Quit Application in the drop-down menu (See image below).
Overview
The processes shown in Activity Monitor can be user apps, system apps used by macOS, or invisible background processes. Use the five category tabs at the top of the Activity Monitor window to see how processes are affecting your Mac in each category.
Add or remove columns in each of these panes by choosing View > Columns from the menu bar. The View menu also allows you to choose which processes are shown in each pane:
- All Processes
- All Processes Hierarchically: Processes that belong to other processes, so you can see the parent/child relationship between them.
- My Processes: Processes owned by your macOS user account.
- System Processes: Processes owned by macOS.
- Other User Processes: Processes that aren’t owned by the root user or current user.
- Active Processes: Running processes that aren’t sleeping.
- Inactive Processes: Running processes that are sleeping.
- Windowed Processes: Processes that can create a window. These are usually apps.
- Selected Processes: Processes that you selected in the Activity Monitor window.
- Applications in the last 8 hours: Apps that were running processes in the last 8 hours.
CPU
The CPU pane shows how processes are affecting CPU (processor) activity:
Click the top of the “% CPU” column to sort by the percentage of CPU capability used by each process. This information and the information in the Energy pane can help identify processes that are affecting Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity.
More information is available at the bottom of the CPU pane:
- System: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by system processes, which are processes that belong to macOS.
- User: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by apps that you opened, or by the processes those apps opened.
- Idle: The percentage of CPU capability not being used.
- CPU Load: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by all System and User processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The color blue shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by user processes. The color red shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by system processes.
- Threads: The total number of threads used by all processes combined.
- Processes: The total number of processes currently running.
You can also see CPU or GPU usage in a separate window or in the Dock:
- To open a window showing current processor activity, choose Window > CPU Usage. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU Usage.
- To open a window showing recent processor activity, choose Window > CPU History. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU History.
- To open a window showing recent graphics processor (GPU) activity, choose Window > GPU History. Energy usage related to such activity is incorporated into the energy-impact measurements in the Energy tab of Activity Monitor.
Memory
The Memory pane shows information about how memory is being used:
More information is available at the bottom of the Memory pane:
- Memory Pressure: The Memory Pressure graph helps illustrate the availability of memory resources. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The current state of memory resources is indicated by the color at the right side of the graph:
- Green: Memory resources are available.
- Yellow: Memory resources are still available but are being tasked by memory-management processes, such as compression.
- Red: Memory resources are depleted, and macOS is using your startup drive for memory. To make more RAM available, you can quit one or more apps or install more RAM. This is the most important indicator that your Mac may need more RAM.
- Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed in your Mac.
- Memory Used: The total amount of memory currently used by all apps and macOS processes.
- App Memory: The total amount of memory currently used by apps and their processes.
- Wired Memory: Memory that can’t be compressed or paged out to your startup drive, so it must stay in RAM. The wired memory used by a process can’t be borrowed by other processes. The amount of wired memory used by an app is determined by the app's programmer.
- Compressed: The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed to make more RAM memory available to other processes. Look in the Compressed Mem column to see the amount of memory compressed for each process.
- Swap Used: The space used on your startup drive by macOS memory management. It's normal to see some activity here. As long as memory pressure is not in the red state, macOS has memory resources available.
- Cached Files: Memory that was recently used by apps and is now available for use by other apps. For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit Mail, the RAM that Mail was using becomes part of the memory used by cached files, which then becomes available to other apps. If you open Mail again before its cached-files memory is used (overwritten) by another app, Mail opens more quickly because that memory is quickly converted back to app memory without having to load its contents from your startup drive.
For more information about memory management, refer to the Apple Developer website.
Energy
The Energy pane shows overall energy use and the energy used by each app:
- Energy Impact: A relative measure of the current energy consumption of the app. Lower numbers are better. A triangle to the left of an app's name means that the app consists of multiple processes. Click the triangle to see details about each process.
- Avg Energy Impact: The average energy impact for the past 8 hours or since the Mac started up, whichever is shorter. Average energy impact is also shown for apps that were running during that time, but have since been quit. The names of those apps are dimmed.
- App Nap: Apps that support App Nap consume very little energy when they are open but not being used. For example, an app might nap when it's hidden behind other windows, or when it's open in a space that you aren't currently viewing.
- Preventing Sleep: Indicates whether the app is preventing your Mac from going to sleep.
More information is available at the bottom of the Energy pane:
- Energy Impact: A relative measure of the total energy used by all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency.
- Graphics Card: The type of graphics card currently used. Higher–performance cards use more energy. Macs that support automatic graphics switching save power by using integrated graphics. They switch to a higher-performance graphics chip only when an app needs it. 'Integrated' means the Mac is currently using integrated graphics. 'High Perf.' means the Mac is currently using high-performance graphics. To identify apps that are using high-performance graphics, look for apps that show 'Yes' in the Requires High Perf GPU column.
- Remaining Charge: The percentage of charge remaining on the battery of a portable Mac.
- Time Until Full: The amount of time your portable Mac must be plugged into an AC power outlet to become fully charged.
- Time on AC: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was plugged into an AC power outlet.
- Time Remaining: The estimated amount of battery time remaining on your portable Mac.
- Time on Battery: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was unplugged from AC power.
- Battery (Last 12 hours): The battery charge level of your portable Mac over the last 12 hours. The color green shows times when the Mac was getting power from a power adapter.
As energy use increases, the length of time that a Mac can operate on battery power decreases. If the battery life of your portable Mac is shorter than usual, you can use the Avg Energy Impact column to find apps that have been using the most energy recently. Quit those apps if you don't need them, or contact the developer of the app if you notice that the app's energy use remains high even when the app doesn't appear to be doing anything.
Disk
The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and written to your disk. It also shows 'reads in' and 'writes out' (IO), which is the number of times that your Mac accesses the disk to read and write data.
The information at the bottom of the Disk pane shows total disk activity across all processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing IO or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of reads per second or the amount of data read per second. The color red shows either the number of writes out per second or the amount of data written per second.
To show a graph of disk activity in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show Disk Activity.
Network
The Network pane shows how much data your Mac is sending or receiving over your network. Use this information to identify which processes are sending or receiving the most data.
The information at the bottom of the Network pane shows total network activity across all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing packets or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of packets received per second or the amount of data received per second. The color red shows either the number of packets sent per second or the amount of data sent per second.
To show a graph of network usage in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show Network Usage.
Cache
In macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or later, Activity Monitor shows the Cache pane when Content Caching is enabled in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. The Cache pane shows how much cached content that local networked devices have uploaded, downloaded, or dropped over time.
Use the Maximum Cache Pressure information to learn whether to adjust Content Caching settings to provide more disk space to the cache. Lower cache pressure is better. Learn more about cache activity.
The graph at the bottom shows total caching activity over time. Choose from the pop-up menu above the graph to change the interval: last hour, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.
Learn more
- Learn about kernel task and why Activity Monitor might show that it's using a large percentage of your CPU.
- For more information about Activity Monitor, open Activity Monitor and choose Help > Activity Monitor. You can also see a short description of many items in the Activity Monitor window by hovering the mouse pointer over the item.
Knowing which Apps or Processes are running on your Mac is important, because some of these Apps could be slowing down your Mac. You will find below 4 different ways to show All the Running Apps and Processes on your Mac.
Why to See All Running Apps and Processes on Mac
In case you are coming from a Windows computer, you must be used to opening the Task Manager on your Windows computer, in order to take a look at all the running apps and processes on your computer.
In the case of a Mac, there are multiple ways to see all the Running Apps and Programs, ranging from the simple option of using the Dock to using the Terminal command.
In general, the purpose of taking a look at All the Running Apps and Programs on your Mac is to get an idea of which programs are actively running on your Mac, what resources they are using and also to rule out the possibility of any unnecessary programs running in the background and using up resources on your computer.
Show All Running Apps and Processes On Mac Using the Activity Monitor on Mac
Activity Monitor can be described as the Mac equivalent of a Task Manager in a Windows computer. The Activity Monitor provides a very good view of the App and processes running on your Mac and the amount of resources being uses by these Apps and Processes.
1. Click on the Finder icon located in the left corner of the Dock (See image below)
2. On the next screen, click on Applications in the left sidebar menu and then click on the Utilities folder.
3. In the Utilities folder, click on Activity Monitor which should be the first item in Utilities Folder (See image below)
4. Once Activity Monitor opens, you will be able see a list of All the Processes or Applications currently running on your Mac (See image below)
As you can see in the above image, there are 5 different tabs in the Activity Monitor -> CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network.
Clicking on each tab will show you more details, for example, clicking on the Memory Tab will show you how much memory each process is using. Similarly, clicking on the CPU tab will show you the amount of CPU being used by each of these Apps and Processes running on your Mac.
5. To view more info about a specific Process or Application, simply click on the Application/Process and then click on the i icon button located at the top left Corner of the screen (See image below).
Zebra 2844 mac software is not licensed. 6. To force quit an application or process through Activity Monitor, simply click on the application you would like to force quit and then click on the x button, located at the top left side of your screen (See image below)
Show All Running Apps On Mac Using Force Quit Applications Manager
Another method to check all the Running apps and programs on your Mac is through the Force Quit applications manager on Mac.
Download Mac Apps
1. Click on the Apple icon in the top menu bar of your Mac and then click on Force Quit Application in the drop-down menu (See image below).
What Is App Memory On Mac
2. This will open the Force Quit Applications manager which will show you all running apps on your Mac
3. To force quit one of these applications, simply click on the application from the list and click on the Force Quit button.
Show Running Apps and Processes On Mac using the Terminal Command
The Terminal also shows you a detailed view of which applications and processes are running on your Mac, along with the percentage of CPU used by each of these applications/processes.
1. To open Terminal on your Mac, do a spotlight search for the Terminal by pressing the Command + Space keys on your Mac keyboard and searching for Terminal in Spotlight Search. (See image below)
2. Next double click on the Terminal option or press the enter key on your Mac’s keyboard to open up Terminal
3. In the terminal type in top –o cpu and press the enter key on your keyboard
This will show you a list of all running apps and processes with the apps consuming the most CPU at the top of the list.
4. To reorganize this list close the Terminal and reopen it. Once Terminal reopens type in top –o rsize and press the enter key on your keyboard.
Now applications or processes which are using the most memory will be listed at the top of the list and the application or processes using the least memory will be listed at the bottom of the list.
Upgrade Mac Memory
Show Running Apps Through Dock
The easiest way to view running apps on your Mac is by simply taking a look at your dock.
All running applications will have a black dot underneath the applications icon (See image below)
Free Up Memory On Mac
While this method is easy to follow, it sometimes will not show you all apps running in the background and does not even show you which processes are running in the background.
Buy Memory For Mac
This method also does not give you much detail, like how much memory each application is using or how much CPU is being used by each application.