Using Activity Monitor

In Applications/Utilities there is an app called Activity Monitor that allows you to track all of the apps and other processes running on your Mac. You can see which ones are using the most CPU, memory, energy, disk access, and so on. While this is useful for software engineers, it isn't really that helpful for typical Mac users.

Comments: 6 Responses to “Using Activity Monitor”

    Tom Hoole
    7 years ago

    I used the activity monitor to track down a problem I had with data usage. I had used over 1tb of data when I normally use about 500gb. I was able to determine something was wrong with the mail app, I uninstalled it then re-installed and it fixed the problem. Thanks for the videos

    ordon Dunlop
    7 years ago

    How to find the "activity monitor"? Very unclear. How do I do this? Please slow down and be more specific. Thanks. Love your work. This is the only I could not follow. Thanks

    7 years ago

    Ordon: Command+space to get to spotlight, then search. You can find any app that way.

    David
    7 years ago

    I occasionally use Activity Monitor to Force Quit a hung app that isn't responding to a Cmd Q or Force Quit command from my taskbar icons. But you're right, most of it is gibberish to me.

    Ælfwynn
    7 years ago

    Activity Monitor (set to Network) is invaluable while surfing on the net'. I use it to monitor incoming data. Sometimes with Safari a web page takes forever to load. I glance at AM to verify either the page is still loading or the server has stalled out and no data is being recieved. I know then that I need to press "reload".

    Gary(not Rosenzweig)
    7 years ago

    As someone else mentioned, you can see the network activity as a moving graph with activity monitor. But you can also have a small version of that graph show up in the dock and stay there. Start Activity Monitor. Right click (or control-click) Activity monitor's icon in the dock. From the menu select Options, then Keep in Dock, and optionally Open at Login. Then select Dock Icon and pick Show Network Usage. Then you can see network activity without having the full Activity Monitor window open.

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