All-mighty Mac system monitor

Activity Monitor Is the Task Manager for Mac. If you go to the Utilities folder under Applications on your Mac, that’s where you can find Activity Monitor, the official task manager for Mac computers. Seeing Activity Monitor for the first time can be overwhelming as the application displays a plethora of information at the same time. Some task manager tools only work on a Windows PC or solely offer a Mac app. As a Mac user, you’ll need a task manager that is either designed specifically for a Mac computer, or works on both systems. Fortunately, there’s a lot of applications out there for you to choose from when you’re using a Mac. Force Quit Task Manager. This one is the basic task manager for Mac. You can open it by hitting Comm. Once you’ve pressed that key combination you’ll see a list of apps that are currently running on your Mac. For the Macbook it is known as the Mac Task Manager The most popular among the task manager is the Windows ask Manager and the reason being the popularity of the OS and ease of use. Other than that Windows Task Manager is quite effective in helping you, manually clean up your device when it becomes slow.

By the virtue of being on Windows for many years, most users develop a muscle memory in hitting Ctrl + Alt + Delete when their PC acts up to open the Task Manager and restart a stalling process. It's just part of daily life. But what's the Mac equivalent of Task Manager?

Some say there's no need for the Apple Task Manager, as Macs run better and smoother than their PC counterparts. And while this is largely true, from time to time you absolutely need a way to force quit Mac processes to keep it in good shape.

More task managers in one pack

Unveil the hidden power of your Mac and solve every problem with Setapp. 180 best apps in one collection. Give it a try!

So how to get Task Manager on Mac? Easy! There's already an OSX Task Manager pre-installed (or rather the Mac equivalent of Task Manager) — called Activity Monitor, which you can find in Applications ➙ Utilities.

Activity Monitor Is The Apple Task Manager

Below is a guide for long-time Windows users in the process of onboarding to Mac and hence wondering, 'Where is Task Manager?' 'How to get Task Manager on Mac?' 'How to open Task Manager on Mac?' But Mac users who haven't used the MacBook Activity Monitor in a while will find the instructions on how to halt Mac processes useful as well.

What is Activity Monitor?

Activity Monitor is basically the OSX Task Manager, a utility that shows how much memory your Mac processes are using and which apps are currently active (even if they aren't open), letting you force quit stalled ones if you can't close them the usual way.

If you've never used this task manager for Mac before, it can be quite a lot to take in. But don't worry, here's a quick breakdown of all Activity Monitor's features.

CPU: The first tab in Activity Monitor lists all the processes that are currently taking up your Mac's CPU, displays the exact percentages of power they are consuming, and notes how long they have been running.

There's a process you might notice in the CPU tab called 'kernel_task' that could be taking a large share of resources. Don't panic and don't shut it down! The process simply ensures your CPU isn't working too hard by forcing other memory-intensive Mac processes out. As a result, it might seem like one of the heaviest processes on the list. Similarly, 'mds' and 'mdworker' help index files for the Spotlight search, which sometimes spikes their appetite.

Memory: The second tab reflects how much RAM every process is taking up, which could be the most useful indicator of all. RAM is directly responsible for the speed of your Mac, so getting rid of heavy users is the fastest way to speed things up.

Another interesting feature of the Memory tab is the RAM Pressure Gauge at the bottom. If the bar is green then your Mac's RAM isn't being taxed too much. But if it turns red — consider buying additional memory for your machine.

Energy: The middle tab comes handy when you're using your MacBook without plugging it in. Here you can easily find apps and processes that drain your battery and quit them to extend your screen time.

Disk: Even though this tab might not be the most useful one for daily use, it still shows how various processes interact with your hard drive, rewriting data. If you ever happen to install some malware, you might find its processes here as large outliers and quit them just in time.

Network: The last tab in Activity Monitor reflects the amount of data received and sent by every app you have installed. Again, it's generally good for spotting outliers that might send too much data online.

Cache: If you're running macOS earlier than High Sierra, you might see another tab in Activity Monitor called Cache. It basically lists how much data your network devices have cached so far and is only useful for those who know how to clean up those caches (read more on this below).

How to open Task Manager on Mac?

Unfortunately, there are no keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl + Alt + Delete to open your Mac process monitor, but launching Activity Monitor is still quite simple. Pick one of the three ways to do it.

Open Activity Monitor from Spotlight:

• Press ⌘ + Space to open Spotlight
• Start typing Activity Monitor
• Once Activity Monitor comes up highlighted, hit Enter or click on it

Open Activity Monitor from Finder:

• Click on Finder in your Dock
• Navigate to Applications on the sidebar
• Choose Utilities in the Applications window
• Double-click on the Activity Monitor icon

Open Activity Monitor from Dock:

If you've been having recurring troubles, setting up Activity Monitor in your Dock is absolutely worth doing. It's essentially a handy one-click Mac Task Manager shortcut.

But before you can open Activity Monitor from your Dock, you need to use one of the previous two methods first. Then, once Activity Monitor is active:

• Right-click on the Activity Monitor icon in your Dock
• Select Options
• Choose 'Keep in Dock'

'Keep in Dock' should now have a checkmark beside it, which means it will stay in the Dock even if you quit the app — then you can launch it like any other program.

How to force quit an application?

If you're looking for answers regarding the Mac OS Task Manager, chances are it's because some app has stalled on you. There are two ways to go here.

From the Activity Monitor:

• Navigate to either the CPU or the Memory tab and find the slow process
• Click to highlight

• Press the X icon in the top toolbar
• Confirm that you're sure you want to quit the process

The other force-quit option is from the Force Quit Applications window:

• Press ⌘ + Option + Esc
• Highlight the program you want to quit
• Click Force Quit

Check out: Mac startup programs

Are there better Apple Task Manager alternatives?

While Activity Monitor is definitely the Mac equivalent of Task Manager, sometimes you want to monitor your Mac's processes a little more closely and get real time updates on your Mac's performance. iStat Menus will help you do that.

Keep your Mac controlled

iStat Menus is the single Mac monitoring tool you need for a great performance. Get updates on your Mac’s resources in a click.

iStat Menus gives you fast updates on what's using your Mac's resources at just a glance. Working hard right from the menu bar, the app displays graphs for nearly every function of your Mac, so you can instantly find out what's wrong or just notice how your Mac behaves in different conditions.

It's likely that if you need a Mac OS Task Manager it's because your computer is running slowly. But don't just address the symptom, address the cause. Instead of quitting processes, get your Mac to run smoothly overall with CleanMyMac X.

CleanMyMac X is an optimization software that's designed to improve your Mac's performance with just a few clicks. It removes user and system caches, protects against malware, uninstalls unwanted software — all to bring your Mac back up to speed. If there's an app constantly stalling or hanging up, it's probably due to a conflict with some other process — CleanMyMac X will clear it up right away:

1. Open the app
2. Navigate to System Junk ➙ Scan
3. Review Details to see what might be wrong and hit Clean

Macbook Task Manager

Knowing how to use your MacBook Task Manager is essential to getting the most out of your Mac and following the tips above is a good start.

Best of all, iStat Menus and CleanMyMac X are both available for a free 7-day trial through Setapp, a platform with over 150 useful apps that turbocharge your Mac's capabilities. Now you surely won't miss the Windows Task Manager at all.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

Macbook Task Manager

Sign Up

Well if you are here then I’m sure you must be new to Mac. This is the most common question mostly asked by users who switched from windows to mac “How to use task Manager on Mac”. Task manager is one of the most useful system monitor program. sometime our applications doesn’t work and we stuck into a window and only way to escape from that application is to end task using task manager.

Task manager provides information about the processes and programs running on a computer. Task manager easily views and manages tasks,applications and any other active processes that are running in Mac OS X. If you’re familiar with the Windows Task Manager, then you must wondering if there’s any task manager for mac?

Yes, there exists Task Manager on Mac but it has another name — “Activity Monitor”.

Contents

• 2 How to Use task manager on Mac
• 4 Frequently Asked Questions related to Mac Task Manager
  • 4.2 2. Is there any Task Manager Alternatives for Mac?

What Activity Monitor is Capable of doing?

The processes that we see in activity monitor are user applications, system applications and invisible background processes. As soon as you open activity monitor you can see at the top of the Activity Monitor window there are 5 activity monitor tabs:

1. CPU
2. MEMORY
3. ENERGY
4. DISK
5. NETWORK
6. CACHE

• The CPU pane shows how processes are affecting CPU (processor) activity
• The Memory pane shows information about how memory or ram which is consumed
• The Energy pane shows overall energy consumed by every single application more the energy consumption lesser the battery backup.
• The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and written to your disk.
• Network pane keeps record of amount of data mac is sending of receiving over network

How to Use task manager on Mac

If you’ve used windows than you must be familiar that we can run task Manager by hitting “CTRL+ALT+DELETE”.

In Mac procedure to open task Manager is bit different. Activity Monitor (Task Manager) is located in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder. You can use Spotlight as a keyboard shortcut for quickly access Task manager.

Follow these simple steps to access Task Manger using Spotlight :

Step 1 :- Using keyboard Press Command+Spacebar to get the Spotlight search field.

Step 2:- Search for “Activity Monitor” .

Macbook Task Manager Shortcut

Step 3 :- You can see Activity Monitor field will appear on your screen double click on it to run.

And that’s how you can use Task Manager on Mac. There are some more methods to open Mac Task manager, let’s have a look.

Open Mac task Manager using finder

If this doesn’t Worked for you don’t panic I will teach you another way to run Task Manger in Mac OS X. Just follow these simple steps:

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

Open task manager on MacOS using dock

• Open Finder and navigate to applications and then Utilities.
• Drag the Activity Monitor application icon to the dock to pin it.
• Once pinned, you can instantly start up Activity Monitor simply by clicking on the pinned icon in the dock.

Is there any shortcut to Force close applications in Mac?

Windows user are very familiar that pressing ALT+CTRL+DELETE will take them to task manager where they can force close their apps or end all tasks running unnecessarily in background. Well there is very similar shortcut like this in mac as well.

To close force quit applications on mac press Command+Option+Escape keys which will bring up the Force Quit Applications window

Using this method of Task Manager Force Quit, you can close any stuck or frozen Window.

Frequently Asked Questions related to Mac Task Manager

1. What is kernel_task ?

While using activity monitor you must have noticed in CPU pane that there is one particular process namely “Kernel_task” which is consuming a lot of system resources.You must be wondering whether is it possible to kill it.

Since kernel_task is essentially the core of the macOS operating system, it’s impossible to stop it. One of the functions of kernel_task is to help manage CPU temperature by making the CPU less available to processes that are using it intensely.

2. Is there any Task Manager Alternatives for Mac?

There are many activities which activity monitor cannot accomplish. To accomplish those task you need to install its alternatives. I will suggest you 2 best alternatives which you can install over your macbook :

Task Manager Apple

1.iStat Menus

Find Task Manager On My Computer

It is one of the most advance task manager available for MAC OS which offers many advance features like task manager with notifications based on CPU, network, disk, battery, support for hotkeys, reorderable drop-down menus, a compact notification center widget, and many more features. Its licensed version will cost around 18$ for new users and for older user it costs 12$ to renew its license.

2.XRG

XRG is very similar to Activity Monitor but it is an open source system monitor. XRG allows you to monitor our activities, battery statistics, disk usage etc. Additionally XRG displays stock market data, current weather as well. it is easy to use and its open source so it is completely free.

Final Tips

If you are new to Mac I’ll recommend you to keep activity monitor in your dock in order to access it conveniently.

If you get scared looking at the statistic at activity monitor or don’t understand what is going on activity monitor you don’t have to worry about anything.

That’s everything about the Task Manager on Mac!! If you have any doubts or questions, let us know in comments.