

You can then force the application to quit as desired in the above window. If these are running in the background and you had no idea they were even open, go ahead and double-click the Process Name or App Name to find out more details about memory, statistics, open files, and ports.

Pay close attention to what programs are causing large impacts to these tabs. Select Activity Monitor, and it will show you the top applications in the last 12 hours, with real-time data regarding energy impact, battery info, and more.įeel free to explore the top five tabs, organized by CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network. Once you launch your Utilities folder, it should look like this: Start on the macOS Desktop to get to the Activity Monitor. I’ll walk you through how to use the Activity Monitor to manually micromanage resource-heavy applications running in the background. It’s valuable to think of the Activity Monitor as the Mac equivalent to PCs’ Task Manager-aka the CTRL+Alt+Delete on a Mac. You can easily troubleshoot your Mac with the Activity Monitor by understanding what is happening “behind the scenes” or “under the hood,” but many casual users don’t even know that Activity Monitor exists. Users can view their CPU, memory, network, disk activity, and usage, as well as individual tasks. It’s an invaluable resource that helps users understand where their system’s resources are being allocated in real time. Luckily, you can substantially increase battery life, bandwidth, and system resources by simply quitting the applications that you may not even know exist.Īctivity Monitor is a built-in utility that comes with the macOS. Their applications stay in the processes and drain your system, even when you don’t use them. Resource-Heavy Applications Running in BackgroundĪny MacBook slows down over time thanks to… developers. You’re in dire need of a hardware upgrade.Īs a bonus, we’ll also cover helpful one-click tools that can save time, money, and quickly free up your precious disk space-without annoying micromanagement of your system.

