View CPU activity in Activity Monitor on Mac
Most of the time, the processor on your Mac uses only a small percentage of its processing power. When you use apps that require intensive calculation, the processor uses more of its capacity. View CPU activity on your Mac in the Activity Monitor window.
To enable viewing in the Dock, select View > Dock Icon and select the Show CPU option you want to view.
In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, do any of the following:
To view processor activity over time, click CPU (or use the Touch Bar). The following percentages appear in the bottom of the Activity Monitor window:
System: The percentage of CPU capability that’s being used by processes that belong to macOS.
User: The percentage of CPU capability that’s being used by apps you opened, or by the processes opened by those apps.
Idle: The percentage of CPU capability that’s not being used.
To view current processor activity, choose Window > CPU Usage.
To view recent processor activity, choose Window > CPU History.
To display more columns, choose View > Columns, then choose the columns you want to show.