In this article, we will explore how to effectively utilize and manage system resources on macOS. Understanding and managing system resources is crucial for maintaining optimal performance and ensuring that your applications run smoothly. This includes monitoring CPU usage, memory allocation, disk usage, and network activity. We will provide practical examples and commands that you can use directly in the macOS Terminal to monitor and manage these resources.

Examples:

1. Monitoring CPU Usage: To monitor CPU usage, you can use the top command in the Terminal. This command provides a real-time view of the system's processes and their CPU usage.

   top -o cpu

   This will sort the processes by CPU usage, allowing you to see which processes are consuming the most CPU resources.

2. Checking Memory Usage: To check memory usage, you can use the vm_stat command, which provides detailed information about virtual memory statistics.

   vm_stat

   The output will show various memory statistics, such as pages free, pages active, and pages wired down.

3. Disk Usage: To check disk usage, the df command can be used. This command reports the amount of disk space used and available on all mounted filesystems.

   df -h

   The -h flag makes the output human-readable, showing sizes in GB and MB.

4. Network Activity: To monitor network activity, the nettop command provides a real-time view of network usage by process.

   nettop

   This command will display network usage statistics, helping you identify which applications are using the network most heavily.

5. Managing Processes: To manage processes, you can use the ps command to list running processes and the kill command to terminate them.

   ps aux

   This command lists all running processes with detailed information. To terminate a process, use:

   kill -9 <PID>

   Replace <PID> with the process ID of the process you want to terminate.