If this doesn’t work, click Force Quit, and, in almost all cases, Activity Monitor will be able to quit the app, removing the offending laggard. If you click Quit, it will try to quit the app in the normal manner.

Activity Monitor will ask if you are sure you want to quit this process. If you find an app that’s not running correctly-or one that shows in red, with the words “Not Responding” after it-click that app’s or process’s name, and then click the X button in the toolbar. In some cases, these may be runaway apps that are stuck. If, for example, the fan on your Mac becomes loud, or you see the battery on your laptop depleting quickly, check the CPU tab to see which apps are taxing the processor. This tab lets you know which apps are working the hardest. You may see apps or processes that are using more than 100% of CPU time this is because a Mac with multiple cores (all new Macs) count each core as 100%. In the above screenshot, I’ve sorted the list by % CPU, or the percentage of the total available CPU time. The CPU tab shows how your Mac’s processor(s) are working. I’ll discuss what you can see on each of these tabs and how they might be useful when diagnosing problems on a Mac. Thy are CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network, and, if your Mac is running the content caching service, you’ll also see a Cache tab. There you’ll see a simple app with five tabs, and a list of entries that changes every few seconds.Įach of the five tabs inside Activity Monitor keep track of certain aspects of your Mac’s performance.

To find Activity Monitor on a Mac, go to your Applications folder > Utilities folder, and then double-click Activity Monitor.

In this article, I’m going to introduce you to Activity Monitor, and explain how this utility can help you find-and, in some cases, resolve-problems on your Mac. One of the tools you can use to troubleshoot problems on a Mac is Activity Monitor, a dashboard for many of your Mac’s under-the-hood activities. Narrowing down the cause of such problems can be difficult fortunately, macOS offers some troubleshooting tools you can use to diagnose what ails your computer. Sometimes some of your apps don’t work, your Mac gets slow, you get a spinning beachball, and more. We never like to have problems with our computers, but they are inevitable. Software & Apps How to Use Activity Monitor to Troubleshoot Problems on a Mac

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