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When you aren’t using your machine, that “Idle” number should be over 90%. But CPU usage should decrease when the task is finished, and it should stop entirely when the app is no longer open. Temporary spikes are normal when an app is working hard, especially if it’s something resource-intensive like video editing or 3D games. Also, when an app consumes too much CPU, it deprives other processes of their share, slowing down your computer and often resulting in frequent, and extended appearance of spinning beach ball in all applications. A busy CPU means shorter battery life and more heat. Sometimes, an app might use more CPU than it should, even when the app doesn’t seem to be doing anything. Blue shows the percentage used by user processes, while red shows the percentage used by system processes. You’ll also see a graph that shows how much of your CPU is being used in total. If you look at the bottom of the window, you’ll see some more general statistics, including the percentage of your CPU currently used by “system” processes that belong to OS X, “user” processes, which are apps you opened, and how much of your CPU is currently not being used. You can read more about those options in Apple’s support documentation.
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The “View” menu also allows you to choose which processes you see: all processes, system processes, active processes, applications used in the last 8 hours, and so on. These monitoring features are invaluable for troubleshooting.
HOW DO I FIND ACTIVITY MONITOR ON MAC UPDATE
The real-time statistics are updated every five seconds, but you can make that shorter or longer by going to “View > Update Frequency” and selecting the frequency level. If you want to see what’s taking up so much network bandwidth, you’d click “Network”.Įach pane shows real-time stats for that resource, as well as graphs that show resource usage over time. For example, if you want to see what processes are using up your RAM, you’d click the “Memory” tab. The five category tabs at the top of the Activity Monitor–“CPU,” “Memory,” “Energy,” “Disk,” and “Network”–focus the list of processes on a given resource. On the top right there is a “Search Filter” box which lets you search for a specific process. Click the column title once or twice to change the order. You can also sort the list of processes by any of the columns in ascending or descending order. Expand the “Columns” option, choose the ones you want to view, and they’ll appear in Activity Monitor. It’s possible to view additional columns by going to the “View > Columns” menu.