What is Activity Monitor?

« Previous Guide.
Next Guide. »
Activity Monitor is a Mac OS X utility that provides runtime details about a Mac's CPU (processor), System Memory, Disk Activity, Disk Usage, and Network.
activity_monitor_icon.pngActivity Monitor makes it easy to:
  • View active processes
  • Inspect active processes
  • Determine the Process ID (PID) of a process
  • Quit and kill processes
  • View the load on the CPU
  • View the memory usage and size by type (free, wired, active, inactive, used)
  • View hard disk metrics such as reads, writes, and performance
  • View the utilized and free space of hard disks
  • Monitor network usage and metrics (packets)
By default Activity Monitory shows you the the applications (and hence processes) running under your user account under a view called 'My Processes'.
Created: 12:17 PM on Jun 15, 2009
By: switchtoamac