One tool to track issues & release great software. Try Jira for free. If all you need to do is to quickly quit an application that is does not seem to be responding, type command-option-esc (simultaneously). That will bring up a dialog box called 'Force quit applications.' Select the app, press the. Mac Task Manager - Control+Alt+Delete for Mac| Nektony Blog. Nektony.com Mac Equivalent of Task Manager 1 – Forse Quit Applications This tool can be launched by pressing ⌘+Option(alt)+Escape shortcut. It is intended to quit applications, i.e. Something like Task Manager in Windows.
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 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. 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. The Activity Monitor will be available from the Dock of your Mac, so you can view it easily. 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 will help you keep an eye on your computer and take its performance to a new level. 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! These might also interest you:.
Activity Monitor is the Mac's Task manager Migration between Windows and Mac users are casual occurrence, caused by variety of reason. Sometimes it's a difference between your own and work computers, sometimes decisions to change your home computers to try another operating system or manufacturer, etc. What is more, common problems after changing the platform are, that you can't find your well known features or application, but that doesn't mean they're not available. Task manager is not an exception, a lot of Windows users who came into Mac world just can't find it. Task manager is well known like a monitor of your system, which allows you to spectate performance of your computer, applications and services that work in the background, resource consumption of each process and launch or close some of your services and process.
So, you are probably wondering whether Macs have such a useful application. Luckily it does, just the name is different - it's called Activity Monitor. However, functions and the principles of operation are very similar to the Windows Task manager. Here we will show you the path and how to use Activity monitor which is equivalent to Task manager. Table of Contents:. It is recommended to run a free scan with Spyhunter - a tool to detect malware and fix computer errors.
You will need to purchase the full version to remove infections and eliminate computer errors. Usage of Activity Monitor on Mac To access Mac's resource monitor the path is a bit different if compared with Windows task manager, where you are able just to click Ctrl, Alt and Delete buttons in keyboard. To launch activity monitor there is three actual ways. You can start your Mac's task manager by opening the finder and locating applications then Utilities and there you will find Activity monitor or just by searching in launchpad, also to use a Spotlight in order to quickly access from keyboard, which is probably the most comfortable way. Press Command and Spacebar at the same time, to bring up the Spotlight search field. Type in Activity Monitor and hit Return button, when Activity Monitor populates in the Spotlight results Since Activity Monitor is really useful and has a lot of permissions, it will help you to sort task by CPU usage, and let you know who's taking most resource, also you can sort by other criterions like name, memory usage, process ID. It owns a search box where you can type the name of process and find it very easy to spectate it's statistics.
What is more, Activity monitor not only displays list of applications together with their information, but also shows your computer's system level tasks, kernel tasks, processes that are launched from another accounts, literally all running process will be displayed. Killing or stopping a task/process via Activity Monitor Even the perfectly developed applications may crash due to various reasons and freeze. Closing or stopping a frozen app might be a little bit complicated task, so the easiest way is to use Activity monitor. To close your frozen application just find it in the list or use the search field, once you found it simply click on your frozen program or task and on the octagonal button with the x inside to close or force close.
You will see a warning message and options to choose force quit, cancel or quit. If your app is unresponsive you can click force quit, this will immediately kill that process and application will stop. Alternatively, an force quit option is available to access straight from your keyboard by clicking Command, Option and Escape keys at the same time which opens a Force Quit Applications Manager, where you will see a list of running programs and a force quit option. This is useful when you need to close frozen app without inspecting system parameters. Check your Mac system parameters Activity monitor displays information not only about your process, but also about your computer. In the bottom of window you are able to see CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk and Network loads and activities, by switching the tabs in top. Checking those stats will help you to troubleshoot who's responsible for your reduced performance of your Mac.
Short description what each tab displays:. The CPU pane shows how each process affects the processor activity.
The Memory pane displays the amount of RAM used by each application. Choose Energy tab and you'll see the overall energy consumption together with the scheduled amounts for each process. In the Disk pane is displayed the amounts of data written and read throw your hard drive.
Check the Network pane to find out which processes transfers the greatest amounts of data. If you prefer to see live system stats and activity, minimize the Activity monitor window, then right-click on icon in the Dock to enable various system activity monitors, which will show live graphs instead of standard app icon. You can choose between CPU usage and history, network usage or disk activity monitors displayed instead of icon. Recommendation for new Mac users Until you get used to Spotlight and how their Mac works, we suggest to keep Activity Monitor pinned in your Dock for easy access.
To keep an icon in Dock just right-click then choose Options and select Keep in Dock. Luckily you will seldom use Mac's task manager, since Mac OS and applications within it has a better performance than Windows, but it's always good to have fast access, in anything crashed. Usually the most common crashes are web browser's subprocess or plugin failures, like Java or Flash messing up and freezing an program or tab in the process. Video Showing how to open and use Mac's task manager.