How to open activity monitor mac

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How to open activity monitor mac

How to Use Activity Monitor to Troubleshoot Problems on a Mac

Posted on February 13th, 2021 by Kirk McElhearn

We never like to have problems with our computers, but they are inevitable. Sometimes some of your apps don’t work, your Mac gets slow, you get a spinning beachball, and more. Narrowing down the cause of such problems can be difficult; fortunately, macOS offers some troubleshooting tools you can use to diagnose what ails your computer.

One of the tools you can use to troubleshoot problems on a Mac is Activity Monitor, a dashboard for many of your Mac’s under-the-hood activities. In this article, I’m going to introduce you to Activity Monitor, and explain how this utility can help you find—and, in some cases, resolve—problems on your Mac.

Where is the Activity Monitor on a Mac?

To find Activity Monitor on a Mac, go to your Applications folder > Utilities folder, and then double-click Activity Monitor. There you’ll see a simple app with five tabs, and a list of entries that changes every few seconds.

Each of the five tabs inside Activity Monitor keep track of certain aspects of your Mac’s performance. Thy are CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network, and, if your Mac is running the content caching service, you’ll also see a Cache tab. I’ll discuss what you can see on each of these tabs and how they might be useful when diagnosing problems on a Mac.

The CPU Tab

The CPU tab shows how your Mac’s processor(s) are working. In the above screenshot, I’ve sorted the list by % CPU, or the percentage of the total available CPU time. You may see apps or processes that are using more than 100% of CPU time; this is because a Mac with multiple cores (all new Macs) count each core as 100%.

This tab lets you know which apps are working the hardest. If, for example, the fan on your Mac becomes loud, or you see the battery on your laptop depleting quickly, check the CPU tab to see which apps are taxing the processor. In some cases, these may be runaway apps that are stuck.

If you find an app that’s not running correctly—or one that shows in red, with the words “Not Responding” after it—click that app’s or process’s name, and then click the X button in the toolbar. Activity Monitor will ask if you are sure you want to quit this process. If you click Quit, it will try to quit the app in the normal manner. If this doesn’t work, click Force Quit, and, in almost all cases, Activity Monitor will be able to quit the app, removing the offending laggard.

The Memory Tab

This tab gives you an idea of how much RAM your apps are using.

You can find the most RAM-hungry apps, and, if your Mac is running slowly, you can choose to quit them. You may even want to find replacements for apps that regularly max out your RAM.

Also check the bottom section, where you see Swap Used. Swap files are virtual memory files that are written to your Mac’s disk. Reading memory data from these is much slower than reading from RAM, and if there is a large amount of swap space used, your Mac will run slowly. This is a good indication that it’s time to restart your computer.

If after a system restart you find that your Mac is still running slowly, have a look at our in-depth guide on how to fix your Mac’s performance issues.

The Energy Tab

The Energy tab tells you which apps and processes use the most power. For a desktop Mac, this isn’t very important, but if you’re seeing poor battery life on a laptop, this is the place to check.

The Energy Impact column updates regularly, and it shows the current power usage, but this varies a great deal depending in which apps you use. The most important column is 12 hr Power. This shows which apps use the most power over the past twelve hours, including time when your Mac was asleep. If your laptop’s battery life is insufficient, check here to see if you’re using an app that’s depleting the battery. This can be a good way of deciding which web browser to use on your laptop. You might try using, say, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, each for a few days, to see which one uses the least amount of power.

The Disk Tab

Most users don’t need to worry about the Disk tab. This shows how much data is being written to and read from your Mac’s drives.

Reading from and writing to a disk also uses power, so if you see a lot of disk activity, and your battery isn’t lasting as long as you expect, have a look at which apps are doing this. One process that may show a lot of activity is cloudd, which is the background process that handles reading and writing data from iCloud. If this number is high, it could be because you downloaded a lot of music or movies, added a lot of photos to your Photos library, or you have worked on a lot of files in iCloud Drive.

The Network Tab

This tab shows how much data is entering and leaving your Mac over its network interfaces for active apps and processes. You can sort by Sent Bytes, Rcvd Bytes, Sent Packets, or Rcvd Packets.

If you have trouble accessing the Internet, there can be numerous causes. Some have to do with your connection, but your network access can also slow down if there’s a lot of data coming into or leaving your Mac. For example, your upstream bandwidth is most likely lower than your downstream bandwidth. If the former is saturated, you’ll find that even loading simple web pages can be painful.

But don’t just look at those Sent Bytes or Rcvd Bytes columns; they show totals since the last time you launched each app or the last time you restarted your Mac, for system processes. Instead, focus on the information displayed at the bottom right, at Data received/sec and Data sent/sec. Those numbers will give you an idea if you’re sending or receiving a lot of data. You can then check the totals by app, and monitor them to see if they increase. Check the Sent Bytes to see if your upstream bandwidth is being used, and your Rcvd Bytes to see if downstream bandwidth is used.

Note that if you want to find out if there’s any excess data usage for Safari, this data is listed under the process Safari Networking, not the Safari app itself. If you want to focus on a specific app or process, you can narrow down the display by typing the name of the process in the search field.

While it’s easy to see what’s using data among apps that access the Internet, don’t forget that you’ll see a lot of data being moved across your local network if you have more than one computer and transfer files between them. The Network pane shows all your network activity, not just to and from the Internet. If, for example, you have Time Machine backups going to a network server, then you’ll see a lot of data sent and received here.

The Cache Tab

If your Mac is running the content caching service, which can save you bandwidth by storing copies of content you download from Apple’s servers, you’ll see a sixth tab: Cache. This tab shows how much data has been served, cached, etc. See this article for more on content caching.

Activity Monitor is just one of the useful tools on a Mac that can help you troubleshoot problems and keep your computer running smoothly. Get to know it so when you need to troubleshoot you can find some pertinent information about how your Mac is running.

How can I learn more?

Each week on the Intego Mac Podcast, Intego’s Mac security experts discuss the latest Apple news, security and privacy stories, and offer practical advice on getting the most out of your Apple devices. Be sure to follow the podcast to make sure you don’t miss any episodes.

You can also subscribe to our e-mail newsletter and keep an eye here on Mac Security Blog for the latest Apple security and privacy news. And don’t forget to follow Intego on your favorite social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

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View information about Mac processes in Activity Monitor

Processes are programs running on your Mac. Processes can be apps, system apps used by macOS or invisible background processes.

Use Activity Monitor to get information about these processes, including how much memory and CPU time the processes are using.

View process activity

In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, do any of the following:

Get information about a process: Select the process, then double-click it or click the Info button in the Activity Monitor window (or use the Touch Bar).

Sort processes: Click a column heading to sort the list.

Reverse the order of items in the column: Click the arrow in the selected column heading.

See general information about all processes: Click CPU in the Activity Monitor window (or use the Touch Bar). Information about the number of open processes and threads appears at the bottom of the window.

Search for a process: Enter the name of a process or app in the search field.

Show more columns

You can choose which columns you want to display in the Activity Monitor window.

In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, choose View > Columns, then choose the columns you want to show (columns that are visible have a tick).

Group processes for easier viewing

In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, in the View menu, choose one of the following:

All Processes: Shows all the processes running on your Mac.

All Processes, Hierarchically: Shows processes that belong to other processes, so you can see the parent/child relationship between them.

My Processes: Shows processes owned by your user account.

System Processes: Shows processes owned by macOS.

Other User Processes: Shows processes that aren’t owned by root or the current user.

Active Processes: Shows running processes that aren’t sleeping.

Inactive Processes: Shows running processes that are sleeping.

GPU Processes: Shows running processes owned by the computer’s GPU.

Windowed Processes: Shows processes that can create a window. These processes are usually apps.

Selected Processes: Shows only processes you selected in the Activity Monitor window.

Applications in last 12 hours: Show only the apps running processes in the last 12 hours.

Processes, by GPU: Shows running GPU processes grouped by GPU.

By default, information in the Activity Monitor window is updated every 5 seconds. To change this, see Change how often information is updated.

[SOLVED] How Do I See Recent Activity On My Mac?

Last updated: April 19, 2022

Almighty writing expert who is proficient in analyzing Mac issues and providing efficient solutions.

Having logs on your computer, whether it be Mac, Windows, or Linux can be very helpful. For instance, if you forgot what you did 3 days ago (which may be very important for work or school), you can check out logs. It can be useful for your security as well. You can check out whether someone has used your computer or not.

As such, you may ask the question, “How do I see recent activity on my Mac?”. This will allow you to double-check the actual tasks you did in the past. In addition, you can see if someone copied your data or attempted to log into your computer.

Here, we will discuss the answer to the question “How do I see recent activity on my Mac?” We will start by talking about how to open Activity Monitor. Then, we will go to the meat of the article where the steps on how to check recent activity on Mac computers are given. Finally, we will recommend a way to speed up your Mac computer.

Part 1. How Do I Open Activity Monitor On Mac?

Before we talk about the question “How do I see recent activity on my Mac”, we should talk about Activity Monitor first. So, how do you open Activity Monitor on your Mac computer? Actually, it’s very easy. Check out the steps below:

The Activity Monitor has five different tabs you can open. Entries are changed after a few seconds to show the activity on your computer. The tabs track different elements of the performance of your Mac. The CPU tab shows how processors are currently working.

The Memory tab shows the amount of RAM or memory your apps are currently using. The Energy tab shows which processes and apps consume your Mac’s power. (You can remove those unneeded apps easily without leaving any leftovers.) The Disk tab isn’t that important. However, it does show the amount of data that is being read and written on your drives.

The Network tab indicates the amount of data that is leaving and entering the computer. This is an important thing to look at if you’re having problems with your Internet connection. Finally, the Cache tab (a sixth one) will be available if the computer is running its content caching service. It displays information about data cached, store, uploaded, etc. Now, let’s talk about how do I see the recent activity on my Mac.

Part 2. How Do I See Recent Activity On My Mac?

So, how do I see the recent activity on my Mac? Here, we will discuss the actual question. There are various ways to do this. Check them out below.

Method 01: Using The Last Command

How do I check login history on my Mac? Here are the steps to check out using the LAST command:

In this case, all login events will be shown. This is displayed in descending order. So, this is the first way on how do I see recent activity on my Mac.

Method 02: Using Console App

At this point, logs are consolidated into a single app. This app will give universal access to all logs in a single place. We call this app Console. Here are the steps to use Console to answer the questions on how do I see the recent activity on my Mac:

Method 03: Finding Unsuccessful Login Attempts

If someone tried to break into your Mac, you may want to know how do I see recent activity on my Mac. Before, it was very easy to see login attempts on your computer. You simply have to type in a command to do this.

However, this doesn’t work since Apple enhanced its security measures. So, you’d have to enable logging private data on your Mac. This can’t be done easily because of security improvements. But, you can find and use the executable created by a developer, but of course, you should be cautious about using it.

Method 04. Using Finder To Check Out Recently Opened Folders

Another way to answer the question on how do I see recent activity on my Mac is to find the folders that have recently been accessed. You can use the Finder on your Mac to do this. Here are the steps on how to do this:

Now, you will be in the menu called Recent Folders. If you want to delete this, you can click the item called Clear Menu. This item can be found in the lower section of the list. Now, once you clear the menu and then check the recent folders, you can discover if someone else has used your computer without your permission.

Now, the next steps are the following:

Another thing you can do to answer the question on how do I see recent activity on my Mac is to check out the Recent Items. Here are the steps on how to do it:

Method 05: Using Browser History

So, how do I see the recent activity on my Mac? Another method of doing so is to check out the browser history on Chrome, Firefox, Safari. This can also be done on other browsers you use. Browser history and search history can be used to check how do I see recent activity on my Mac. It can also be used to find the other sites, you have accessed previously.

Method 06: Using Apps And Their Recent Items

You can check out the various apps that are associated with your files in order to know how do I see the recent activity on my Mac. For instance, you can check out your image files, JPG or PNG. You can use Preview. Here are the steps to do this:

Other apps you can check include Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word. You can check online if an app can help you on how do I see recent activity on my Mac

Part 3. How To Use Activity Monitor To Speed Up Mac?

How do I see the recent activity on my Mac? You can check out the methods above. However, you can also speed up your Mac by using the Activity Monitor. In this article on how do I see the recent activity on my Mac, we will teach you various ways to speed up your computer too.

Here are the steps on how to speed up your Mac using Activity Monitor:

So, in this article on how do I see the recent activity on my Mac, that’s how to use Activity Monitor in order to speed up your computer. Lucky for you, there’s another way we will show you in this article how do I see recent activity on my Mac. Check it out in the next section.

Speed Up Mac With PowerMyMac

Another thing you can do to speed up your Mac is to use PowerMyMac tool. This tool has a lot of mini tools or modules in it for speeding up your Mac computer. Some of the modules can be seen below:

As such, we have given you the top ways to answer the question of how do I see recent activity on my Mac. Our article has given six different methods to do this. In addition, we have given you an overview of Activity Monitor and how to speed up your Mac using it.

Finally, we recommend that you grab PowerMyMac to have an optimization tool for your computer. In this way, you can remove unwanted and unnecessary files. You can even find duplicate files you don’t need. The PowerMyMac tool of iMyMac is essential for all Mac desktop and laptop owners. Grab it now!

Руководство пользователя приложения «Мониторинг системы»

для macOS Monterey

Закрытие приложений и процессов, которые не отвечают на запросы

Если система работает медленно или просто не отвечает на запросы, проблема может быть вызвана приложением или процессом. С помощью Мониторинга системы можно найти проблемные приложения и процессы и завершить их принудительно.

Просмотр энергопотребления Mac

Вы можете узнать, сколько энергии потребляет Ваш Mac, и посмотреть, какие приложения и процессы потребляют больше всего энергии.

Просмотр состояния ЦП, сети или диска в Dock в реальном времени

Можно следить за состоянием системы, даже не открывая окно Мониторинга системы: активность ЦП, загруженность сети и использование диска могут отображаться на автоматически обновляемом графике прямо в панели Dock.

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