New switchers to Mac from PC might feel a little at a loss without the need to hit the CTRL + ALT + DEL keys every so often but what if you want to monitor your Mac’s processes or force quit an application or process that is not obviously available in Mac OS X’s Command + Option + ESC force quit combo?
You can do so with the Activity Monitor application which can be found in your Mac OS X’s Applications/Utility folder. At press time, Activity Monitor ships with all Mac OS X versions to date.
For new switchers to Mac from PC you should be familar with the Windows platform key combo to force quit applications/processes (CTRL + ALT + DEL). The key combo of Command + Option + ESC is an equivalent on the Mac OS X platform. Invoking this key combo on your Mac OS X will bring up the Force Quit window detailing the current applications that are running. If an application has inadvertently failed to respond or ‘hung’ a message prompting to this effect will appear next to the affected application. To force quit an application simply select it and click the Force Quit button.
Note that if you select Finder in the Force Quit window, a Relaunch button will appear in lieu of the Force Quit button. This occurs because Finder is always running on your Mac OS X as it faciliates the windows environment and file management system and cannot be shutdown without shutting down your entire Mac OS X. Relaunching Finder will get you out of jams that involve the Finder.
Another application/process that is always running since Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is, Dashboard. Mac developers have produced scripts and hacks* that allow Mac OS X Tiger to function or boot without running Dashboard. Most users only resort to this to squeeze every ounce of free memory from their Mac OS X system, dispensing the need for Dashboard.
A detailed examination of your Mac OS X’s performance can be acquired using Activity Monitor which can be found in your Mac OS X’s Applications/Utility folder (hit Command + Shift + U in your Finder to quickly access your Utility Folder). The main services provided by Activity Monitor include:
- identifying processes;
- observing CPU activity;
- memory, disk and network usage
An added usefulness for Activity Monitor is its ability to force quit not only applications but processes which are running on your Mac OS X, e.g. Dashboard Widgets, which are not visible in the Force Quit window.
Activity Monitor also allows Administrators to force quit applications that other users have opened. Certain applications can have only a single occurence on a single Mac OS X system, e.g. if you want to use iDVD that has been left running on another user’s account, as an administrator you can use Activity Monitor to quit the iDVD occurence in the other user account.
However, the caveat of ‘quitting with care’ must be applied when quitting applications/processes in Activity Monitor. Selecting ‘All Processes’ will display all processes running on the Mac OS X system, including administrative processes. Quitting these processes can result in unstable behaviour and system crashes. Such actions should only be carried out only if you are confident in your knowledge of what is safe to quit and what isn’t.
*Running unapproved scripts to procure this effect is not recommended if you are not certain of the scripts functionality and/or purpose. Doing so might result in system corruption or leave your Mac OS X open to malicious hacking.