Where is the task manager?

OS X Activity Monitor

One of the tools that Mac users usually use is the OS X Activity Monitor. Many of the users who come to OS X come from Windows and this tool is what we can compare with the well-known and widely used "Task Manager" that is integrated into the Windows operating system. Yes, it is about being able to see the use of our machine in terms of internal hardware: percentages of use of the CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network.

When we talk about Activity Monitor in OS X we talk about having control over our processes on Mac and this is undoubtedly very interesting for some users. In short, and for all of us who have been using Windows for many years, it is what would come to be the Task Manager that is launched when we carry out the combination "Ctrl + Alt + Del", but in Mac OS X it is called Activity Monitor and it is easy to launch since it has its own application within our Launchpad, which allows us to launch it from Launchpad itself, from Spotlight or even from Finder in the Applications folder. We are going to see more details about this Activity Monitor and the little tricks it hides.

How to open Activity Monitor

Activity monitor icon

Well, if you have come this far it is because you simply want to know all the consumption data of your new Mac. I already mentioned at the beginning that we have different options to open this Activity Monitor but the best thing if we are going to use it a lot and to do more easy access, what we advise you is that you keep your Activity Monitor in a well accessible place to see the data and processes at any time. This is very simple to do and you only have to access from your Launchpad> Others folder> Activity Monitor and drag the application to the dock.

You can also access the activity monitor using Spotlight or within the Applications> Utilities folder. Any of the three methods works for you.

In this way the Activity Monitor will be anchored in the Dock and you will no longer have to access from the Launchpad, Spotlight or Finder, it will be directly one click away and we will have much faster and easier access when we sit in front of the Mac. allows us to access the "most hidden options" of this Activity Monitor that we will see in the next section.

Task manager information on Mac

This is undoubtedly the reason for this article. We are going to see each and every one of the details that the Activity Monitor offers us and for this we are going to respect the order of the tabs that appear in this useful OS X tool. We also have a button with a "I" that offers us information on the process quickly and the ring gear (setting type) in the upper part that offers us the options of: process sampling, run the espindump, run the system diagnostics and others.

Part of these hidden options that we talked about at the beginning of the article are the option of leaving the dock icon pressed, we can modify its appearance and add a window in the applications menu where the usage graph will appear. To modify the application icon and see the processes directly we just have to hold down the dock icon> Dock icon and choose what we want to monitor in the same.

CPU

CPU activity monitor

This together with Memoria is undoubtedly the section most used by me and what it shows us is the percentage of use of each and every one of the applications running. Within each of the applications we can perform different tasks such as closing the process, sending commands and more. Within the CPU option we have various data available: The percentage of the CPU used by each application, the CPU time of the threads, Activation after inactivity, the PID and the user who is executing that application on the machine.

Conference proceedings

Monitor memory in OS X

Within the Memory option we can see different and interesting data: the memory that each process uses, the compressed memory, the Threads, the Ports, PID (it is the identification number of the process) and the user who is carrying out these processes.

Energy

Power monitor in OS X

This is undoubtedly another point to take into account if we use a MacBook since it offers us the consumption of each of the processes that we have assets on the Mac. This Energy tab offers us different data such as: the energy impact of the process, the average energy impact, whether or not it uses Nap App (App Nap is a new feature that arrived in OS X Mavericks and it automatically reduces system resources to certain applications that are not currently in use), Prevent idle and user login.

Disc

Monitor hard drive usage on Mac

Know to the finger what it is generating Reading and writing is increasingly important due to the rush of current SSDs. These disks contain Flash memory and are certainly twice as fast as HDD disks, but they also "screw up sooner" the more they read and write. In the Disk option of the Activity Monitor we will see the: Bytes written, Bytes read, the class, the PID and the user of the process.

Red

Network activity in OS X

This is the last of the tabs offered by this complete Activity Monitor in OS X. In it we find all the data referring to the navigation of our equipment and we can see the different details of each process: Bytes sent and Bytes received, Packets sent and Packets received and the PID.

Ultimately it is about obtain information on all processes that our Mac does, including the Network ones, and to be able to close them or notice the percentages used by some applications and processes on our Mac. Also, having the option to modify the dock icon to see the details of the Activity Monitor in real time is good to detect anomalies or strange consumptions. In addition, having everything with a graph in the window itself facilitates the detail of all the points.

Surely this Activity Monitor makes it easier for us to detect a process that had us concerned and also the option that allows us to close it directly from there, which makes work easier for the user. On the other hand, surely more than one of the users who come from the Windows operating system is used to performing the Ctrl + Alt + Del key combination to see the Task Manager and of course in Mac OS X this option does not exist.

What is clear is that if you come from Windows, you should forget about the classic task manager since on Mac it is called "Activity Monitor". The sooner you get used to it the better, as this will save you time looking for an application that does not exist in MacOS.


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  1.   oscar said

    as always mac does it better than windows

    1.    Thomas4 said

      Erm…. Nope

  2.   Alejandra Solorzano M. said

    Hello, I need help, I don't know how to find these two options of the mac operating system. I need help. Could you help me? I need it for Thursday, thank you… It is:

    Mac device management
    File management

  3.   madison said

    I need which are the administrators of brings mac