Monitoring the system status on macOS is crucial for maintaining the health and performance of your Apple devices. This includes keeping an eye on CPU usage, memory consumption, disk activity, and network performance. Unlike Windows, macOS has its own set of tools and commands that can be used to check the system status. This article will guide you through various methods to monitor system status on macOS using built-in tools and Terminal commands.

Examples:

1. Activity Monitor:

   • Description: The Activity Monitor is a graphical user interface tool that provides real-time information about CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network usage.
   • How to Access:
     1. Open Finder.
     2. Navigate to Applications > Utilities.
     3. Open Activity Monitor.
   • Usage: You can switch between different tabs to monitor various aspects of your system. For example, the "CPU" tab shows the percentage of CPU usage by each process.

2. Terminal Commands:

   • top:

     • Description: The top command provides a real-time view of system processes, including CPU and memory usage.
     • Usage:

       top

     • Example Output:

       PID    COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH   #WQ  #PORT MEM    PURG   CMPRS  PGRP  PPID  STATE    BOOSTS           %CPU_ME %CPU_OTHRS UID  FAULTS   COW     MSGSENT    MSGRECV    SYSBSD    SYSMACH    CSW        PAGEINS IDLEW  POWER INSTRS    CYCLES
       1      launchd      0.0  00:01.00 3     0    112   2.3M   0B     0B     1     0     sleeping *0[1]            0.00000 0.00000    0    142      0       0          0          0          0          0          0        0      0.0   0.0    0.0

   • vm_stat:

     • Description: The vm_stat command provides information about virtual memory usage.
     • Usage:

       vm_stat

     • Example Output:

       Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
       Pages free:                               40000.
       Pages active:                             100000.
       Pages inactive:                           20000.
       Pages speculative:                        3000.
       Pages throttled:                          0.
       Pages wired down:                         50000.

   • iostat:

     • Description: The iostat command reports CPU and I/O statistics.
     • Usage:

       iostat

     • Example Output:

         disk0       cpu     load average
       KB/t tps  MB/s  us sy id   1m   5m   15m
       35.00  12  0.41  3  2 95  1.20 1.15 1.10

   • nettop:

     • Description: The nettop command provides a detailed view of network usage.
     • Usage:

       nettop

     • Example Output:

       Interface: en0
       Active Time: 0:00:30
       In:  500 KB
       Out: 200 KB