We never like to have problems with our computers, right? However, some of them are inevitable. Sometimes your apps don’t work, your Mac gets slow, you see a spinning wheel of death, and more. Understanding the root of some problems can be difficult; fortunately, there are some troubleshooting tools to diagnose what’s wrong with your Mac.

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One of such tools is the Activity Monitor, and in this article we’ll tell you how to use it, what alternatives are out there, and how to maintain your Mac to avoid different problems. So let’s start!

Activity Monitor — The Task Manager for Mac

If you’re familiar with the Windows Task Manager, then you may wonder whether there is a twin for Mac. Don’t worry, a Task Manager exists on Macs but it has another name — Activity Monitor. Just keep in mind that Activity Monitor is the Mac Task Manager equivalent and functions in a very similar way as it does in Windows.

Activity Monitor shows the processes that are running on your computer, so you can see how they affect your Mac’s performance. This important tool will help you manage your Mac’s activity, so you should know how to use it at its full potential.

How to open Task Manager on Mac

Activity Monitor is located in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and there are a few ways to launch it. The simplest one is to use Spotlight for a quick search.

Here’s how to access Task Manager on Mac using the Spotlight:

1. Press Command+Spacebar to get the Spotlight search field.
2. Start typing “Activity monitor.”
3. Select the Activity Monitor when it comes up. This will take you to the app.

However, if Spotlight doesn’t work or you just want to try another way to open Task Manager Mac, do the following:

1. Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
2. Choose Applications from the side menu of the window that appears.
3. In the Applications folder, select the Utilities folder and open it.
4. Double-click on the Activity Monitor icon to launch it.

Good news, you can avoid the long ways of opening a Task Manager by pinning it to the Dock. Once you do it, you’ll be able to access the Activity Monitor by simply clicking on its icon.

Follow these steps and you won’t keep asking yourself how to start Task Manager on Mac every time you need to check some processes:

Wunderlist is the best iOS task manager for most of the people because it is free to use. Open Mac task Manager using the finder. No doubt Mac provides world’s best gadgets and different tools but However, sometimes problems also exist in the opening of Task manager in your Mac. Here I’ll discuss some other easy ways for opening Mac task manager OS X. Just follow these simple steps: Click on the finder icon in the Dock. On Mac computers, the Activity Monitor application is equivalent to the Task Manager program found on Windows PCs. You can open Activity Monitor using either the Launchpad or the Applications folder on Macs running OS X Yosemite.

1. Open the Activity Monitor using one of the ways described above.
2. Right-click on the Activity Monitor icon in the Dock.
3. In the menu, choose Options and then click Keep in Dock.

That’s it! The Activity Monitor will be available from the Dock of your Mac, so you can view it easily.

How to use the Activity Monitor

The Activity Monitor is a simple but very important tool. Find out what you can do with its help.

Monitor the system parameters

Once you open the Activity Monitor on your Mac, you’ll get access to the five tabs: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network. By analyzing the data, you can identify what processes affect your Mac performance.

• The CPU pane shows how processes are affecting the processor activity.
• The Memory pane shows how the RAM is used by apps on your Mac.
• Tap on the Energy pane and you’ll see the overall energy use and the energy used by each app.
• The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and has written to it.
• Use the Network pane to identify which processes send and receive the most data.

View additional info about an app or process

The Mac Task Manager also allows you to check the additional information about every application or process on your Mac. Here’s how to view it:

1. Click on the application or process you’re interested in.
2. Click on the i button in the top left corner of the Activity Monitor window.
3. You’ll see a pop-up window showing additional information about an app or process.

As you see, the Activity Monitor is a real gem. It helps you gain insight into many useful things. Therefore, it will be much easier to diagnose any problem your Mac has.

How to Force Quit applications from a Task Manager in Mac

If some application or program freezes and you can’t quit it normally, you can use the Activity Monitor to shut it down. To force quit an app from a Mac Task Manager, do the following:

1. Open the Activity Monitor on your Mac and click on the application you want to force quit.
2. Then click on the X button in the top left corner of the Activity Monitor window.
3. You will see a pop-up window asking if you want to quit this process.
4. Click Quit to close the unresponsive app.
5. If the app is still open, choose Force Quit to immediately end the process.

What’s a Control+Alt+Delete equivalent on Mac?

All Windows users know this magic combination: Control+Alt+Delete. The first thing they do when an app or program hangs is using this keyboard shortcut. Fear not: there’s the similar shortcut for Macs.

In addition to the Activity Monitor, Macs have a Force Quit Applications Manager that allows to close the frozen apps and programs. To open it, hold down the Command+Option+Escape keys.

If you just need to force quit an application and don’t care how much CPU or Energy it is using, then you should launch a Force Quit Applications Manager to perform the task. It gives an immediate access to all apps, so you can quickly solve the problem of an unresponsive program.

Maintain your Mac a whole lot easier with CleanMyMac X

What if we tell you that there is a way to avoid all those frozen apps, unresponsive programs, and spinning beach balls? Most likely, you won’t even need to know how to get Task Manager on Mac because everything will work smoothly. Sounds attractive?

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The secret is the regular maintenance of your Mac. And a smart utility like CleanMyMac X will help you keep an eye on your computer and take its performance to a new level. You can download it for free here.

CleanMyMac can not only clean up the system from all the junk, but also free up RAM, delete and reset apps, manage the startup items, remove cache files, and speed up your Mac with its maintenance scripts. That’s what will ensure the good health of your Mac and its top performance.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

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Sep 28, 2020 • Filed to: Solve Mac Problems • Proven solutions

If you have also moved to the macOS ecosystem recently, then you can have a similar query as well. Unlike Windows, accessing the task manager on Mac can be a tedious job. Though, it is one of the essential features of the operating system. From monitoring the CPU consumption of an application to closing a process forcefully – there are so many things that you can do with Macbook task manager.

To help you do the same, we have come up with this detailed guide on macOS task manager. Read on and learn how to access the task manager on Mac in no time.

Part 1. Is There a Task Manager for Mac?

As you know, the task manager is a native feature on Windows computers. Though, Mac also has a similar component, which is known as Activity Monitor. As the name suggests, it will let you view and monitor all kinds of activities that are running on your Mac. You can view the CPU utilization of a process, system memory, disk storage, and other vital parameters. Furthermore, you can also use the Mac program manager to forcefully quit an app as well.

The feature was first introduced in Mac OS X v10.3 release and was initially known as process viewer or task manager on Mac. It was later when the tool was revamped and got released as an 'Activity Monitor' with Mac OS X 10.9 release.

Part 2. How to Open Task Manager on Mac?

In order to access the features of the Mac process manager, you need to locate the application first. Here are some quick ways on how to open the task manager on Mac that you can also try.

1. Access Task Manager from the Finder

This is the easiest solution to open the task manager on Mac. All you got to do is click on the Apple icon from the main menu and visit System Preferences > Applications. From the available Applications on Finder, visit the Utility folder.

This will open all the utility tools and components on your Mac. Just look for the 'Activity Monitor' tool and double-click its icon to open it.

2. Get Mac Task Manager on Spotlight

Spotlight is one of the most widely used features in Mac that helps us look for files and apps instantly. If you can't find where is task manager on Mac, then click on the spotlight bar (the search icon) at the top right corner of the screen. Now, just type 'Activity Monitor' on it as Mac would look up for it in the background. As you would get the relevant results, click on the Activity Monitor app to open it.

3. Open Task Manager from Mac's Dock

Apart from Finder, Mac's dock also lets us access the vital tools and applications quickly. By default, Activity Monitor is already a part of Mac's dock. Though, you can just drag and drop its icon to include it in the dock as well. Just double-click the Activity Monitor icon on the dock to launch it.

If you want, you can further customize the task manager Mac icon as well. Just right-click the icon to access its context menu. From here, you can select what to monitor and change the dock icon to different options.

4. Use the Mac Task Manager Shortcut

Some macOS versions also have a keyboard shortcut to open task manager in Mac. All you got to do is press Command + Option + Shift + Esc keys at the same time. Keep holding them simultaneously for at least 3 seconds to launch the Activity Monitor app on the screen.

Part 3. How to Format Hard Drive for Mac and PC on Windows?

Now when you know how to access the task manager on Mac, you can easily make the most of it. It can help you monitor the activity of all kinds of apps and processes running on your system. If you want, you can even use the Mac task manager app to forcefully quite a process as well. Apart from that, you can get to know about the following components via task manager on Mac (Activity Monitor).

• CPU – This is the most important component as it provides a visual representation of the CPU utilization. Here, you can view how the processor of your Mac is affected by the app and what component is utilized by it. This can help you identify the most resource-consuming apps and processes.
• Memory – This is mostly the second component in Activity Monitor which depicts how much memory (RAM) a process is consuming on your Mac.
• Energy – If you are worried about the power consumption or overheating of Mac, then you should visit this tab. It will display the amount of energy consumed by an app or a process.
• Disk – This component will provide useful details about disk utilization on Mac. You can see the amount of disk an app has consumed, the kind of data consumed, who can access it, and so on.
• Network – Lastly, the tab will let you know the amount of data that has been exchanged on the network. This would include incoming and outgoing data via different sources.

Part 4. How to Force Quit an Application on Mac?

This is one of the major jobs of the Mac task manager app. It can help you monitor all kinds of above-listed parameters and let you forcefully quit an application too. For instance, if an application has been stuck or frozen, then you can just close it in the background using the task manager on Mac. Here are some of the simplest ways to forcefully quit an application on Mac.

1. Use the Apple Menu

If an application has been crashed on your Mac, then don't worry. Just press and hold the Shift key and click on the Apple logo (on the top left corner of the screen). Here, you can see an option of 'Force Quit' with the name of the selected application. Just click on it to close the application in the background.

2. Use the Mac Dock

If you want, you can also take the assistance of Mac's dock to close an application as well. Needless to say, the mouse should be working and the app must be present on the dock. All you got to do is select the app icon and right-click it. From the available context menu, click on 'Force Quit' to close it.

3. Use Activity Monitor

If you want to know about the details of an application before closing it, then consider using Activity Monitor. You can follow either of the above-listed methods to open the task manager on Mac. As you would get a list of all the running applications in the background, select the one that you wish to close. Click on the 'Force Quit' button and confirm your choice to close the selected application.

Part 5. How to View Running Processes via Terminal?

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Just like Activity Monitor, you can also use the Terminal to view all the running processes in your Mac. It will display a unique ID for every process, which you can later be used to kill the process as well.

1. Go to your Mac's Applications > Utility and launch the Terminal app from here.
2. If your Mac is malfunctioning, then restart it in the recovery mode and go to Utilities > Terminal instead.
3. Once the terminal app has been launched on your screen, simply type the 'ps –ax' command and press enter.
4. This will display a list of all the running processes with their process ID (known as PID).
5. If you want to forcefully close a process, then type 'kill' followed by its PID. To close all the processes of that application, just type 'killall' followed by the name of the app and press enter.

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Part 6. Tips for Using Task Manager on Mac

Since Activity Monitor (task manager on Mac) is such a useful component, it will come handy to you on different occasions. If you want to make the most of it, then consider following these tips.

• If the Activity Monitor icon is not added to the dock, then simply drag and drop it there. This will let you access it quickly.
• Using the task manager on Mac, you can even close some vital system processes. Therefore, try not to close a process you are not able to understand.
• You can also use the Activity Monitor the see the battery consumption of the system. It will also help you identify and close the most power-consuming apps.
• Ideally, it is used to forcefully close a malfunctioning application. Whenever an app would crash, open the Activity Monitor, select it, and forcefully quit the application.
• Try not to use the Activity Monitor to close apps on a regular basis. This might end up corrupting your apps at times.

Conclusion

That brings us to the end of this informative guide on how to access the task manager on Mac. Not only have we discussed how to open the task manager on Mac, but we have also listed its usage and all the vital things we can do with it. Since Activity Monitor is the Mac equivalent of Task Manager (Windows), every user should be aware of it. Feel free to follow this guide and try to access Activity Monitor on your Mac as well.

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