Advertisement Wondering how to open the task manager on a Mac? You might not know where this important utility is located on macOS if you’re used to Windows, or perhaps you’ve never needed to open it before. Either way, we’ll show you multiple ways to get to the task manager on your Mac. Meet Activity Monitor Before we proceed, Every Windows user should know the basics of working on a Mac.
Here's a quick guide to help Mac newcomers find their way around., you should know that the proper name for the macOS equivalent of the Windows Task Manager is the Activity Monitor. They perform similar functions, but they don’t actually have the same name. With that out of the way, let’s see the ways to start the task manager utility on Mac and what it can do. How to Open the Task Manager on Mac The easiest way to open pretty much anything on your Mac is using Spotlight. This built-in search feature can find apps, files, and settings in just a few keystrokes. To open Spotlight, just press Cmd + Space on your Mac.
In Windows to Force quit or shut down a task, there is ctrl + alt + delete (Windows Task Manager). In Mac, it is known as Activity Monitor. Yes, Mac OS has its own task manager. Mac Equivalent of Task Manager. The Task Manger on a Windows Computer is used to quit applications, whenever an application or program gets stuck or freezes on a Windows Computer. Activity Monitor is the Mac’s version or the equivalent of Task Manager as found in Windows Computers.
Then start typing Activity Monitor (the first few letters should bring it right up) and press Return. In a moment, you’ll see the Activity Monitor window. Don’t want to use Spotlight for some reason? You can open the macOS task manager using the Launchpad icon on your Dock. In the list of apps, open the Other folder, and you’ll see an icon for Activity Monitor. Finally, you’ll also find Activity Monitor if you open Finder and browse to Applications Utilities. Keep Activity Monitor in the Dock Once you open Activity Monitor using any of the above methods, it will appear in the Dock at the bottom of your screen.
However, this disappears once you quit the app. If you’d like to keep the icon close at hand, right-click it and choose Options Keep in Dock. Then the icon will remain even when the app is closed.
What Does the Task Manager Do on Mac? You’ll find a lot of functionality similar to the Windows Task Manager in Activity Monitor. At the top, you can choose to view information about CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network usage.
Each one shows you the processes on your computer and various information about their impact. Most of the time, the average user won’t have much reason to open the task manager on their Mac and poke around. The system should work just fine without micromanaging processes. However, it can prove useful if you have issues on your Mac. For instance, if your system feels slow, you might be able to pinpoint it to Noticing an errant process called kerneltask eating much of your Mac's available CPU?
You're not alone. Weeding out apps with high energy consumption can provide better battery life for your MacBook. And you can get a handle on what apps access the internet most with the Network tab. Now You Know About the Mac Task Manager It’s not difficult to access Activity Monitor and see what’s happening on your Mac. We’ve shown you several shortcuts for opening it, and reviewed what information it provides. For more information on what this tool can do, see If you want to be a fairly proficient Mac user, it is necessary to know what Activity Monitor is, and how to read and use it. As usual, that's where we come in.
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Activity Monitor is the Mac's Task manager Migration between Windows and Mac users are casual occurrence, caused by variety of reason. Sometimes it's a difference between your own and work computers, sometimes decisions to change your home computers to try another operating system or manufacturer, etc. What is more, common problems after changing the platform are, that you can't find your well known features or application, but that doesn't mean they're not available. Task manager is not an exception, a lot of Windows users who came into Mac world just can't find it.
Task manager is well known like a monitor of your system, which allows you to spectate performance of your computer, applications and services that work in the background, resource consumption of each process and launch or close some of your services and process. So, you are probably wondering whether Macs have such a useful application. Luckily it does, just the name is different - it's called Activity Monitor.
However, functions and the principles of operation are very similar to the Windows Task manager. Here we will show you the path and how to use Activity monitor which is equivalent to Task manager. Table of Contents:. It is recommended to run a free scan with Spyhunter - a tool to detect malware and fix computer errors. You will need to purchase the full version to remove infections and eliminate computer errors. Usage of Activity Monitor on Mac To access Mac's resource monitor the path is a bit different if compared with Windows task manager, where you are able just to click Ctrl, Alt and Delete buttons in keyboard. To launch activity monitor there is three actual ways.
You can start your Mac's task manager by opening the finder and locating applications then Utilities and there you will find Activity monitor or just by searching in launchpad, also to use a Spotlight in order to quickly access from keyboard, which is probably the most comfortable way. Press Command and Spacebar at the same time, to bring up the Spotlight search field. Type in Activity Monitor and hit Return button, when Activity Monitor populates in the Spotlight results Since Activity Monitor is really useful and has a lot of permissions, it will help you to sort task by CPU usage, and let you know who's taking most resource, also you can sort by other criterions like name, memory usage, process ID. It owns a search box where you can type the name of process and find it very easy to spectate it's statistics.
What is more, Activity monitor not only displays list of applications together with their information, but also shows your computer's system level tasks, kernel tasks, processes that are launched from another accounts, literally all running process will be displayed. Killing or stopping a task/process via Activity Monitor Even the perfectly developed applications may crash due to various reasons and freeze.
Closing or stopping a frozen app might be a little bit complicated task, so the easiest way is to use Activity monitor. To close your frozen application just find it in the list or use the search field, once you found it simply click on your frozen program or task and on the octagonal button with the x inside to close or force close. You will see a warning message and options to choose force quit, cancel or quit. If your app is unresponsive you can click force quit, this will immediately kill that process and application will stop.
Alternatively, an force quit option is available to access straight from your keyboard by clicking Command, Option and Escape keys at the same time which opens a Force Quit Applications Manager, where you will see a list of running programs and a force quit option. This is useful when you need to close frozen app without inspecting system parameters. Check your Mac system parameters Activity monitor displays information not only about your process, but also about your computer. In the bottom of window you are able to see CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network loads and activities, by switching the tabs in top. Checking those stats will help you to troubleshoot who's responsible for your reduced performance of your Mac.
Short description what each tab displays:. The CPU pane shows how each process affects the processor activity.
The Memory pane displays the amount of RAM used by each application. Choose Energy tab and you'll see the overall energy consumption together with the scheduled amounts for each process. In the Disk pane is displayed the amounts of data written and read throw your hard drive.
Check the Network pane to find out which processes transfers the greatest amounts of data. If you prefer to see live system stats and activity, minimize the Activity monitor window, then right-click on icon in the Dock to enable various system activity monitors, which will show live graphs instead of standard app icon. You can choose between CPU usage and history, network usage or disk activity monitors displayed instead of icon. Recommendation for new Mac users Until you get used to Spotlight and how their Mac works, we suggest to keep Activity Monitor pinned in your Dock for easy access. To keep an icon in Dock just right-click then choose Options and select Keep in Dock. Luckily you will seldom use Mac's task manager, since Mac OS and applications within it has a better performance than Windows, but it's always good to have fast access, in anything crashed.
Usually the most common crashes are web browser's subprocess or plugin failures, like Java or Flash messing up and freezing an program or tab in the process. Video Showing how to open and use Mac's task manager.