The "Monitor de Atividades," known as Activity Monitor in English, is a built-in utility on macOS that allows users to monitor and manage their system's performance. It provides real-time data on CPU usage, memory allocation, energy consumption, disk activity, and network usage. This tool is essential for troubleshooting performance issues and optimizing system resources.

Opening Activity Monitor

To open Activity Monitor on macOS, follow these steps:

1. Using Spotlight Search:

   • Press Command (⌘) + Space to open Spotlight.
   • Type "Activity Monitor" and press Enter.

2. Via Finder:

   • Open Finder and navigate to Applications.
   • Go to the Utilities folder.
   • Double-click on Activity Monitor.

Understanding Activity Monitor

Activity Monitor has several tabs, each providing specific information about your system:

• CPU: Displays the percentage of CPU capacity used by each process. This helps identify processes that are consuming excessive CPU resources.
• Memory: Shows how much RAM is being used and how much is available. It also provides details on memory pressure and swap usage.
• Energy: Useful for laptop users, this tab shows the energy impact of running applications, helping to conserve battery life.
• Disk: Displays the amount of data being read from and written to the disk by each process.
• Network: Shows data sent and received over the network, helping identify processes using significant bandwidth.

Practical Examples

Example 1: Identifying High CPU Usage

1. Open Activity Monitor and click on the CPU tab.
2. Click on the % CPU column header to sort processes by CPU usage.
3. Identify any processes with unusually high CPU usage.
4. If necessary, select the process and click the X button in the toolbar to quit it.

Example 2: Monitoring Memory Usage

1. Go to the Memory tab in Activity Monitor.
2. Check the Memory Pressure graph at the bottom of the window. Green indicates sufficient memory, while red suggests a need for more RAM.
3. Review the list of processes to see which are using the most memory.
4. Consider closing applications or processes with high memory usage to free up resources.

Example 3: Checking Energy Impact

1. Click on the Energy tab.
2. Look at the Energy Impact column to see which applications are consuming the most power.
3. For laptops, this can help in deciding which apps to close to extend battery life.

Command Line Alternative

For users comfortable with the terminal, macOS also provides command-line tools like top and ps to monitor system performance:

• Using top:

  • Open Terminal and type top to see a real-time list of processes and their CPU usage.

• Using ps:

  • Execute ps -A to list all running processes.
  • Use ps aux | sort -nrk 3,3 | head -n 5 to display the top 5 CPU-consuming processes.