74 MACWORLD JANUARY 2022
WORKINGMAC USE ACTIVITY MONITOR TO HANDLE TROUBLESOME APPSprocesses and reveals the biggest hogs
based on CPU, memory, energy use, disk
use, and network bandwidth. And if a
specific app is unresponsive and can’t be
shut down the traditional way, you can
force it to close. Here’s how it works.
To open this tool from Finder, click the
Go menu, browse to Utilities, and then
launch Activity Monitor in the window that
appears. The utility starts by showing
every running app and process based on
CPU resources. Each column for CPU
shows a useful result, but the stats for CPU
percentage are the most helpful for app
troubleshooting.
You can sort the list of apps based on
the highest or lowest numbers by
clicking on the heading of each column.
A graph at the bottom displays the total
numbers for CPU percentage and a
number of other factors.MONITORED ACTIVITIES
You can switch views by clicking the tab in
the upper right of the Activity Monitor. CPU
is the first tab, and the default view the app
opens.
On Macs with a discrete graphics
processor, the GPU section appears after
CPU. This shows which apps are making
the most demands on the processor.
The Memory screen shows the amount
of memory each running app uses so you
can find any app that’s chewing up more
than its fair share. The bottom of the
screen reveals the total and used amount
of memory on your Mac. The stat for Swap
Used can tell you if your Mac is copyingActivity Monitor can provide insight as to what apps are using the most resources on your Mac.