If you have switched to Mac OS X from Windows operating system, you will not feel comfortable. It is because many options are not the same as in Windows. So, you may find it hard to perform various tasks in beginning. It manages software in a different way. You have different folder options. Options to close an app or Window are on the left side while you have that on right in Windows. Personally, I find MacOS easier than Windows. But a new user might find it complicated as he was comfortable with Windows. So, performing many tasks is not easy.
In similar things, you may find it hard to open Task Manager In Mac OS X. Actually, in Mac OS, there is no task manager. So, it is impossible to find the Task manager on Mac. But it has Activity Monitor which is the same as the Task manager for Windows. So, you can also call Activity Monitor as Task Manager for Mac. In this post, I will show you how to open and use an activity monitor or task manager for Mac.
The primary reason for writing this post is that I found various people searching for task manager mac on different online forums. So I thought o explain the same thing in an article and use Task Manager in Mac as the title of the post. In reality, Task manager is the tool of Windows OS and it does not exist for macOS. In macOS, we use the Activity Monitor for the same things.
How to Open Task Manager on Mac
If you want to open the task manager or Activity Monitor on Mac, you should go to Applications > Utilities, and then select “Activity Monitor” application. You can also open the spotlight search and type activity monitor to open it. To open Spotlight search, either click on Magnify icon at the top-right side of the screen or press command+space. Then search for Activity Monitor and open it by clicking on results.
Once you open the activity monitor, you will see the task manager of the Mac system. It shows all the things you could see in the Task Manager for Windows.
Activity Monitor is the task manager for Mac OS. It displays processes of the system running under user-level, system-level and kernel level. If a program is running on your Mac computer, you can easily find it in Activity Monitor.
You can see what process is consuming the process and memory of your system. It also allows you to sort processes by PID, CPU usage and CPU Time. At the below side, it also shows a CPU load graph. So, you can easily find what app is consuming your system’s CPU or RAM. If an app is not responding well, you can consider closing it.
If you want to force quit the Mac application, you can select the process of that app and click on the X icon on the top side. See the below screenshot.
Click on that icon and confirm the force quit the process.
You can also use the activity monitor to check what app is using Disk and network more. So, you have full detail of apps running on your system. This is the same thing you get in task manager if you are on Windows. So, you have the same thing on MacOS with a different name.
What’s a Control+Alt+Delete equivalent on Mac?
Most of the users who switch from Windows to Mac usually miss the option Control+Alt+Delete as it opens the task manager. This option is useful when your app stops responding. You can press this key combination to open task manager and close the unresponsive app. If you want to open the Activity monitor in the same way, you have no option for that. But you can still open the force quit window to close the app that is creating an issue. For this, you need to hold down the Command+Option+Escape keys. It doesn’t open the Activity monitor but a window to force quit an app. So, you can easily close the app that is unresponsive.
In the Force Quit window you see the running apps. The frozen apps will be marked red. If you want to close one, just select the click on Force Quit. Now you know the alternate of Control+Alt+Delete in macOS.
Note: If you want good software to keep your Mac fine and fix most of the issues, I recommend CleanMyMac x. It helps you to keep an eye on your Mac computer and remote all junk, reset apps and take its performance to a new level. If you have recently switched from Windows to macOS, you can consider CleanMyMac3 as an alternative for CCleaner for MacOS. So, you must try that if you are struggling with performance issues on your Mac system.
Final Words
This was the task manager for Mac or Activity Monitor of Mac OS X. You can do all those tasks which you could do in the task manager for Windows. If you were also looking for the Task manager mac, I am sure you already got the solution. Now you also know that you should start calling it Activity Monitor. Open the Activity Monitor and check what system processes are consuming how much CPU and RAM. If any process is creating trouble by consuming lots of RAM or CPU, you can close it. I have also told you the alternate of Control+Alt+Delete for MacOS. So, you can use these two things to keep an eye on processes and close the unresponsive app.
Even if the article says task manager on Mac, I have already made it clear that MacOS comes with an Activity Monitor which is the same thing. But people who switch from Windows to Mac search for task manager on mac. This is the reason, I referring to task manager on Mac.
Now you know how to access Activity Monitor or task manager. I hope you find this article interesting. If you still have anything to ask, you can comment below.
