How to Find Resource Hungry Processes
Use the Activity Monitor — sort of like the Task Manager on Windows to view your running processes and find ones devouring too many resources. To launch it, press Command+Space to open Spotlight search, type Activity Monitor, and press Enter.
Click the “% CPU” heading to sort by CPU usage and see the running applications and processes using the most CPU. In some cases, there may be a single runaway application using 99% CPU that you’ll want to end. To force-quit a process, select it by clicking it and click the X button on the toolbar. Be sure you aren’t quitting a process that’s doing something important. You can always try to close a resource-hungry app in the normal way first.
If this isn’t working, click the “View” menu and select “All Processes” to see all the processes running on your Mac. You can also click over to the Memory section — a process using a large amount of memory could cause your Mac to slow down. Try the “Disk” section, too — a process using the disk heavily could also be causing your Mac to slow down.
Click the “% CPU” heading to sort by CPU usage and see the running applications and processes using the most CPU. In some cases, there may be a single runaway application using 99% CPU that you’ll want to end. To force-quit a process, select it by clicking it and click the X button on the toolbar. Be sure you aren’t quitting a process that’s doing something important. You can always try to close a resource-hungry app in the normal way first.
If this isn’t working, click the “View” menu and select “All Processes” to see all the processes running on your Mac. You can also click over to the Memory section — a process using a large amount of memory could cause your Mac to slow down. Try the “Disk” section, too — a process using the disk heavily could also be causing your Mac to slow down.