Collect information or quit a process with Activity Monitor
Sometimes users might encounter system performance issues on their Mac.
When diagnosing system performance, you can show users how to use Activity Monitor to view and manage apps and processes and view resource usage.
Activity Monitor is a tool that provides detailed information into system performance and resource use, helping users identify app usage. By analyzing real-time data on CPU, memory, and network usage, you can help users identify potential performance issues or resource-intensive processes that may hinder app functions. You can also monitor overall energy use and find details about the energy use of each app.
Additionally, Activity Monitor allows you to troubleshoot and diagnose issues related to apps unexpectedly quitting or slowdowns by examining process behavior and identifying apps or processes.
View system diagnostics
Activity Monitor can collect information about the status of a Mac in a system diagnostics report. You can save the system diagnostics report and send it to your IT team or AppleCare.
In the Activity Monitor app on a Mac, click the “System diagnostics options” pop-up menu, then choose one of the following:
Sample Process: Creates a report on a selected process over a period of 3 seconds.
Spindump: Creates a report for unresponsive apps that were terminated using force quit.
System Diagnostics: Creates a report based on different logs on a Mac.
Spotlight Diagnostics: Creates a report based on all the processes running on a Mac.
Quit an app or process in Activity Monitor on Mac
You can use Activity Monitor to quit a process, even if it’s in a loop or not responding. You can also send a signal to a process to terminate it. If you attempt to quit a process you don’t own, you may be required to authenticate as an administrator.
To quit an app or process, follow these steps:
In the Activity Monitor app on a Mac, below the Process Name list, select the app or process you want to quit. An unresponsive process is marked with “(Not Responding).”
Note: The Process Name list isn’t available in the Cache tab listings.
Click the Stop button in the upper-left corner of the Activity Monitor window.
Choose one of the following options:
Quit: This is the same as choosing File > Quit within an app. The process quits when it’s safe to do so. If quitting the process could cause data loss or interfere with another app, the process doesn’t quit.
Force Quit: The process quits immediately. If the process has files open, you may lose data. If the process is used by other apps or processes, those apps or processes could experience problems.
To check whether a process is used by another process, choose View > All Processes, Hierarchically.
To send a signal to a process, select it in the process list, choose View > Send Signal to Process, choose a signal from the pop-up menu, and click Send.