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Improve Activity Monitor Reporting Speed in Mac OS X with Update Frequency

Feb 24, 2014 - 3 Comments
Activity Monitor icon in Mac OS X

Many advanced Mac users have noticed that Activity Monitor appears slower these days when the app is updating CPU, Memory, Disk, Energy, and Network data, with the monitoring app apparently no longer offering real-time system resource statistics. Instead, Activity Monitor now defaults to offering a general aggregate of system use that feels relatively delayed. Well … Read More

See What Processes Are Running in the Background of iOS

Aug 29, 2013 - 2 Comments
Task Manager in iOS

iOS does not have an Activity Monitor or task manager the way that desktop Macs do within OS X, but if you’d like to see what apps and processes are running in the background of an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you can do so using a few different methods. For most users, simply showing … Read More

How to View All Running Apps & Processes in Mac OS X

May 17, 2013 - 20 Comments
See what apps are running by looking at the Mac Dock

There are a variety of ways to see all applications or programs which are running on a Mac, ranging from only seeing “windowed” apps running in the graphical front end, to revealing even the most obscure system-level processes and tasks running at the core of Mac OS. We’ll cover five different ways to view these … Read More

Kill Google Chrome Tabs and Windows with Task Manager

Nov 4, 2011 - 4 Comments
The Chrome Task Manager

Google Chrome has a built-in Task Manager tool that lets you kill individual tabs, windows, plugins, and even extensions. This is extraordinarily helpful if you encounter a page that gets tied up, beach balls, or can’t be closed due to any number of errors. For those of us who live centered around the web, this … Read More

Make Activity Monitor Easier to Read with Hierarchical Process Sorting

Aug 30, 2011 - 3 Comments
Sort Activity Monitor by Hierarchy Process

If opening up Activity Monitor is confusing or intimidating to you, or you just find it hard to track down that errant Chrome Worker process, try sorting the list by “All Processes, Hierarchically”. Sorting by hierarchy breaks the processes down into apps and their child processes, grouping together things like all of the “Google Chrome … Read More

Adjust a Mac Apps CPU Priority with Process Renicer

Feb 21, 2011 - 2 Comments

As most modern OS’s go, Mac OS X is generally pretty intelligent with how it prioritizes processes. That said, if you want to give any running task an extra kick in the pants, you can use a free tool called Process Renicer.

The Mac Task Manager

Aug 15, 2010 - 47 Comments

Many new Mac users are coming from the Windows world where they would access the Task Manager to end tasks and stop errant processes. The Mac has it’s own Task Manager but it goes by another name: Activity Monitor. Activity Monitor functions in a very similar way to how Task Manager does in Windows, letting … Read More

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