Task Manager For Mac
- Task Manager on Windows serves an important purpose as it enables users to quit unresponsive and problematic applications. For those of you who have recently switched from a Windows PC to Mac, there’s also a Task Manager on Mac however it is called the Force Quit tool.
- A task manager is a pre-installed utility in any operating system which enables users to check which all programs or processes are running on their machine and what all resources they are consuming. From here you can force quit or end tasks which are not required to get your computer’s resources more focused on what you are actively doing.
- How to open Task Manager on Mac? Task Manager = Activity Monitor. Firstly, we would like to mention that the equivalent of Task Manager on Mac is Activity Monitor. Activity Monitor lets you easily view active processes that are running on your Mac, manage them, and even quit tasks or applications.
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.
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.
Jan 23, 2019 Task manager for mac also available but it has a different name. It provides computer performance and running software details. It also provides terminate option to stop any process within a second. Mac has Task Manager with a different name ‘Activity Monitor’.
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”
Best Task Manager For Mac 2018
“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
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.
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:
Open the app
Navigate to System Junk ➙ Scan
Review Details to see what might be wrong and hit Clean
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.
Hello to all users of Apple incredible gadgets. This is your very own Steve Sadiq with another article that will guide you regarding how to usetask manager on Mac. Hopefully you are enjoying more delightful time with your Mac. It is surely stated that there is no match of Apple gadgets on this planet. However, users need some guidelines related to the use of different features.
Here we are providing you the complete and most easy to learn ways to use your Macbook and if you ever find any issue in your Mac, Steve Sadiq is always there for you guys. First of all we have to evaluate some important questions comes in the mind of users while using Mac.
The most common question mostly asked by you people who switched from Windows to Mac “How to use task Manager on Mac”. Task manager is one of the most useful systems in the monitor program. When OS on your Mac stuck and you cant do your work easily ,then only way to solve this problem is to switch from task by using Task manager which is already present in your Macbook.
What is Mac Task Manager:
Contents
- 1 Frequently Asked Questions related to Mac Task Manager
Task manager provides all kind of information about systems and programs in your Mac. Task manager easily views and manages tasks, applications in your system and any other active processes that are running in Mac OS X. It manages all activities on your Mac. If you’re familiar with the Windows Task Manager, then you must have information about the Task Manager on your Mac.
Yes Task manager also exist on your Mac by a different name “Activity Manager”
What Activity Monitor is Capable of doing?
First of all, you should have the knowledge about what Activity Monitor can do on your Mac.It can control the processes that present on Mac and mostly used by users are user applications, system applications and invisible background processes which we cannot see on the visible area of Mac. As you open the activity monitor you can see at the top of the Activity Monitor window, there are 5 activity monitor tab as:
- CPU
- MEMORY
- ENERGY
- DISK
- NETWORK
- CACHE
- The CPU pane tells that how different programs/activities affecting the CPU or processor activity.
- The memory pane shows how these activities consume internal memory of your Mac.
- The Energy pane shows how much energy is consumed by every applications and process of your Mac. This system in your Mac also provides the assessment to users that when more energy is used by different applications then battery backup will be more less. So it is a beneficial point of this system that you can control energy consumption.
- The Disk pane shows the amount of data each part of your system has read and have applied processing on this data.
- Network pane keeps the record of the amount of data Mac is sending or receiving through Network.
How to Use task manager on Mac
Here we will discuss the Method of using a Task manager on Mac.
However, In Mac procedure of opening the Task manager on Mac is a little bit different as Mac provides more unique features to users. Activity Monitor (Task Manager) is located in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder. You can use Spotlight as a keyboard shortcut for quick access to Task manager.
Here we are providing you the easiest steps to open Task Manager using Spotlight on your Mac :
1st Step:- Using keyboard Press Command+Spacebar to get the Spotlight search field.
2nd Step:- Search for “Activity Monitor”.
3rd Step:- You can see the Activity Monitor field will appear on your screen double click on it to run.
And that’s the way how you can use Task Manager on your Mac. There are some more methods to open Mac Task manager, let’s we discuss them:
Open Mac task Manager using the finder
No doubt Mac provides world’s best gadgets and different tools but However, sometimes problems also exist in the opening of Task manager in your Mac. Here I’ll discuss some other easy ways for opening Mac task manager 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 Utility folder and open it.
- Double-click on the Activity Monitor icon to launch it.
Open task manager on Mac OS using the 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 users are quite familiar that pressing ALT+CTRL+DELETE will take them to task manager where they can force close their apps which are currently open or end all tasks running unnecessarily in the background. Well, there is very similar shortcut like this in your Mac as well Like:
To close force quit applications on a mac press
keys which will bring up theForce Quit Applications window
Using this method of Task Manager Force Quit, you can close any Window which has stuck on your Mac during your working.
You might find this information useful.
Frequently Asked Questions related to Mac Task Manager
Mac Activity Monitor
Here we will discuss most frequently asked questions by users about the use of Mac Task manager:
What is kernel_task?
While using activity monitor you must have noticed in CPU pane that there is one particular process name “Kernel_task” which is consuming a lot of system resources. You must be wondering what is it?
Since kernel_task is essentially the part of the Mac OS operating system, it’s impossible to fix it. One of the functions of kernel_task is to help manage CPU temperature by making CPU unavailable for processing of activities which are consuming CPU intensily. Kernel Task cannot be controlled because it is the part of Mac operating system however the simple way to quick out from kernel task is to simply restart of your Mac, but it is only short term solution to quit from this problem.
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 :
1.iStat Menus
It is one of the most advanced task manager available for MAC OS which offers many advanced 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 the older user it costs only 12$ to renew its license.
2.XRG
The next is XRG. It is very similar to Activity Monitor but it is an open source system monitor. The XRG allows you to monitor your activities, battery statistics, disk usage etc. Additionally, XRG displays stock market data, current weather as well. it is easy to use and it is an open source so it is completely free.
How to search on mac for words. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc.
Concluding Remarks
It is suggested that If you are new to Mac then you should keep activity monitor in your dock to get its easy access.
If you cannot understand the statistics on the activity manager on your Mac then you should not worry about it simply follow the guidelines provided above.