If you have a Mac, you might want to have tighter control over it, in any case you will wonder how to monitor what happens to your computer when you are not. It is possible that this is manipulated and you do not realize this, so monitoring what is happening is an option, as for Mac we have options to see what the computer does when we do not use it.
We must keep in mind that when we are going to perform this monitoring, there are some processes that the system performs in the background. That is why we must be clear that we can get on the road with processes that are normal to run and we do not know that it is so; and not only does cleaning your Mac’s hard drive improve performance, by doing this process, we can configure many things that also help this.
What are the normal processes that the CPU of a Mac does?
We can define normal processes as automatic processes, these processes are executed in the background, so that the operation of the system in general is executed normally. These processes should not be taken into account as you want to monitor them, as this is what the Mac does normally.
These processes are categorized into five parts CPU, Memory, Power, Disk and network. In these parts are made up of everything that happens on the computer, from what is essential to run to what we do with programs and applications, knowing what is the location of directories on Mac, is very important for this work , so we will know what we are looking for
How do I know which applications are using CPUs on a MacOS system?
As for monitoring applications and how they are running, we can corroborate this in two ways; one would be using the “Activity Monitor” and the other through “commands entered into the terminal.” Any of the above will be very useful for our purpose.
From here we can determine if there are any unknown programswhich are not beneficial for the system, and these require an action from us and we have to take action on this detail.
Using the activity monitor
As far as this method is concerned we can have many variables on the board, what it would be advisable to do is see how the processes work, when they are in full use, and when they are not. Pfor this we will use time as a referencethat is, how that process was at the time of use and how it behaved when we stopped using it.
To enter this part of the system we must go to Applications> Utilities> Activity Monitor, and in this we will get all the activity regarding everything. In this way we can see what is happening and how the resources are being used; in any case we will have to know what we are looking for because the list and processes to consult are very wide.
With commands on the MacOS terminal
Having the terminal we can access tools that will allow us to delve deeper into all of them processes that are running on the computer. With these we can see more details about each action that is being carried out; and is that if there are unknown and unwanted processes, we can determine if we should remove or clean the Mac virus.
First we have commands that allow us to organize them, either CPU and Memory, “top-or cpu” and “top-or rize” respectively, each of these will show a list of running processes and resource utilization from top to bottom. Top is updated live. Now let’s look at other commands that are also used for this.
- One is “ps aux” so you can see a fixed list, ie not in live update.
- Now we have “pa aux / more” used to place them in descending order.
- We also have “ps aux / grep (application name)” with this we are looking for a specific process.
Remember that we can also find out the location of the repository of a specific application, and so using this tool in a separate terminal, we can focus our search well.
What programs are there to monitor CPU usage on Mac?
We can also count on programs, which they are specifically designed for this purpose, give us a significant contribution in terms of monitoring these actions carried out by the CPU. Although the system has its tools, by making these programs, we can have access to a more intuitive interface in case we do not have experience with the terminal or the activity monitor.
In the Apple Store we can get the programs for this monitoring, and be able to be sure that they serve perfectly an example of these would be iStats Menus, a very complete application that will surely serve you in this case of supervision
What are the best tips for improving CPU performance on Mac?
When it comes to improving the performance of your Mac, it’s always a good idea to clean up both the hardware and the software. As for the logical system delete temporary files, cookies, duplicate files, obsolete files and also make use of programs that are dedicated to improving performance, would be a good option to improve.
