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. GoodTask 3 is a fully featured task or project manager for Mac. The app syncs with the default Reminders and Calendars to let you manage them with ease. You can quickly edit your tasks thanks to the bulk editing and deleting features. You will be able to duplicate, change due dates, and add tags to easily access any tasks. 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. Part 1: Activity Monitor – The Task Manager for Mac. Activity Monitor is the simple and important task manager for Mac. It enables you to monitor the system parameters, view the details about the Mac apps or processes, or even manage the apps with ease.
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.
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
Task Manager Apple
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:
- Press Command+Spacebar to get the Spotlight search field.
- Start typing “Activity monitor.”
- 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:
- 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.
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.
Macbook Task Manager Command
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:
- Open the Activity Monitor using one of the ways described above.
- Right-click on the Activity Monitor icon in the Dock.
- 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.
Apple Task Manager Mac
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:
- Click on the application or process you’re interested in.
- Click on the i button in the top left corner of the Activity Monitor window.
- 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:
- Open the Activity Monitor on your Mac and click on the application you want to force quit.
- Then click on the X button in the top left corner of the Activity Monitor window.
- You will see a pop-up window asking if you want to quit this process.
- Click Quit to close the unresponsive app.
- 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?
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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If you are a user of Windows then you most probably know the importance of CTRL, ALT and Delete keys. This is the combination you provide to your windows computer when you need the task manager to appear in front of you so that you can end a process that is hanged. Task manager can be put to good use if you can know their functionality very well. You can just keep an eye on the day to day process that is going on, on your computer. It’s like a CCTV camera. 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. But nowadays people are going towards the more comfort zone and thus choosing Mac for comfort and class. As the title suggests we will be moving forward with the Mac task Manager and ways you can use it for your day to day use in your Macbook.
The Mac task manager is also known as the Activity Monitor as you control various activity and processes in your Mac Book with the help of it. But it is quite similar as well as quite different from the windows task manager at the same time. The activity monitor can monitor system parameters, force stop apps that got hanged, view additional info and keeping your computer neat and clean manually. In this ways mentioned you can compare it with the Windows task manager for similarity however when you try to find out the difference, there are not so many apart from the usability and interface. You will not be able to open Activity Monitor with the conventional CTRL, Alt and Delete command rather there is a different process for that. But first, let us take a look at the various features of the Activity Monitor.
Basically here we are going to look at some of the features the Mac task manager has so that you can explore it more for your day to day works.
1. Monitor the Various system parameters
The first thing you get to see when you open the Mac task manager is a cool interface with some tabs or panes. These tabs are in the form of categories which are Memory, CPU, Disc, energy (battery) and Network.
The memory tab is basically used to keep an eye on the storage system of the Computer. Through it, you can keep an eye on the RAM, its activities and how it is being used.
The CPU tab helps to check how much the processes are affecting the processor and its activity.
The disc tab shows how much data has been read from your disc or written to your disc.
The Energy pane simply keeps an eye on the battery/power consumption and also provides us the usage details.
The network pane can be simply used for getting a note of the data that are sent or received by processes during a task.
2. Force stop applications that are not working
You can force stop applications that are not working or has stopped working. In order to do so, you need to go to activity monitor, select the application that got freeze and force close that application.
3. View additional information about the processes and application on your Mac book
You can check out additional info about the processes and applications that are currently running on your Mac book. To do so you need to go to Activity monitor and click on I button to know more about the application.
4. Remove unwanted files and make your computer clean
You can also clean apps that are unnecessarily using RAM and Disc memory In order to keep your computer neat and clean.
Remember, how we used to press the CTRL, Alt and Delete buttons to bring the task manager so that we can force stop unwanted processes? This is all the same in the Activity monitor as well, the only difference being the CTRL, Alt and Delete buttons are not used here to call it. Rather it can be launched directly. The Mac Task manager is located in the Applications>Utilities> folder location of your Mac Book. To open it you can follow the steps given below.
1. Using Spotlight
- First, you need to open the Spotlight search field and for that, you can press command and spacebar simultaneously.
- Type Activity monitor and it will appear in the list. Select it and wait for a few
2. Using finder
If the previous method fails then you can simply use this method as well.
- Go to the Finder icon in the Dock and select it.
- A window will appear and you will then need to choose the application pane for sidebar menu in the window.
- Thereafter, you need to go to the Utilities Folder. There you will find the Activity Monitor.
- Click on the Activity Monitor Icon next to run it.
3. Pin it to the Dock
You can simply pin it to the Dock so that you can run it easily whenever you want to. To do so
- Open the Activity Monitor using the above-mentioned
- Right click on the Activity Monitor icon and choose “Keep in Dock” option to keep the application in the dock for later use. It’s like the toolbar in windows.
4. Force stop application
As mentioned above few times that there are no CTRL Alt and delete option for the Mac counterpart to call the Activity Monitor. You need to visit the activity monitor first. Then you need to select the app that has been freeze and is not working. After that click on the “x” button to simply close it. You may find a window pop up which will ask for your surety on whether you want to close the application or not. Click on agree and proceed. However, you can use Command, Escape and option keys on your Mac Book to call the Force Quit app manager. This will help you to easily close the unnecessary apps on your Mac book.
Using Mac may be hard for the first timers and especially those who had just shifted from windows. However, there are numerous ways you can ease your work while working on a Mac book. The good news is that you will be needing the activity manager less often because the apps and the device is built far better than a device with a similar configuration on other OS. However, in case of emergency, you need to use writemypaper it and thus now you can use it from the dock itself after reading this article.