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Windows Task Manager equivalent for Mac OS X?

Windows Task Manager equivalent for Mac OS X?

My MacBook seems to be really slow these days, no matter what I do. On Windows I had so many choices to figure out what's taking memory, CPU cycles and what not and take action appropriately.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 340
Total answers/comments: 5
Guest [Entry]

Activity Monitor. It's included with OS X. Just look in your Applications/Utilities folder or use Spotlight to find and open it.
Guest [Entry]

"As others have answered, Activity Monitor in /Applications/Utilities/ is the most direct equivalent to the Windows Task Manager, but there are other options..

I mainly use iStat Menus to work out which application is using up all the CPU time..

Instead of having to launch Activity Monitor (which takes a few seconds to start), I just click the little CPU menu bar item, and it lists the current top processes:

You can also use the ""top"" command instead of Activity Montior (it's quicker to launch also). Just run the top command in a terminal:

I have an alias ltop which launches top, ordered by CPU usage, with a few flags to reduce it's CPU usage (reduces it's accuracy with regards to memory usage, but uses about 2% CPU instead of about 10-12% by default):

alias ltop='top -F -R -t -o cpu'"
Guest [Entry]

"Also, interesting to note that you have a shortcut ( that took me a year to remember ) to quick access that:

command+option+esc

Super handy ( as Task Manager in Windows is super super handy )"
Guest [Entry]

You can check out "Mac Helpmate" to tidy up your OS.
Guest [Entry]

A powerful utility (CLI) is process explorer from mac, available here. It emulates Linux top with Mac OS X and iOS specific options, and is also grep-able.