214
votes
Accepted
What is this qemu-system-aarch64 process and why is it using almost 3 GB of RAM on my M1 Mac
This process belongs to an application you've installed yourself.
To find out more, select the process in Activity Monitor and press Cmd-I to open the Process Information window. You should see the ...
- 94.3k
136
votes
What is this qemu-system-aarch64 process and why is it using almost 3 GB of RAM on my M1 Mac
It was Docker for Mac!
There is no clear name indication that this is a Docker process, so you can't clearly spot it in the Activity Monitor unless you use View -> All Processes, Hierarchically or ...
113
votes
Can I see my CPU and memory usage meters in the menu bar?
One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Stats, which describes itself as a
Simple macOS system monitor in your menu bar
It's an excellent open source project (https://github.com/exelban/stats) that ...
- 1,486
77
votes
Accepted
Activity Monitor columns missing
You can reset your Activity Monitor settings by quitting Activity Monitor, and then deleting the preferences file, and any preferences lock files, and then re-opening the app.
Open Terminal and paste ...
- 9,937
72
votes
Why are there so many valid users on macOS?
This is the principle of least privilege.
The principle means giving a user account or process only those privileges which are essential to perform its intended function. For example, a user account ...
grg♦
- 195k
40
votes
My external monitor doesn't work at full resolution with my MacBook
You can go to System Preferences > Displays, then option-click (press option key while left-clicking) on Scaled to expose additional resolutions that aren't exposed with a normal left-click.
...
- 4,775
37
votes
macOS - ntpd uses more than 100% of CPU
Go to System Preferences > Date and Time and uncheck Set date and time automatically. Close System Preferences, then reopen and re-check Set date and time automatically
- 471
32
votes
31
votes
Activity Monitor columns missing
The "Process Name" column is too big, causing it to crowd out the other columns pushing them to the right side. You can manually resize the "Process Name" column by enlarging the Activity Monitor ...
- 411
30
votes
Firefox "not responding", can't force quit, doesn't show in activity monitor
This is what I answered in a similar question. It did the trick for me.
I had the same problem with NetBeans and this is what worked for me:
sudo killall launchservicesd sudo killall Dock
...
- 1,418
28
votes
VS Code - Code Helper process using more than 100% CPU on macOS
This is most likely an issue with a plugin in VS Code. For me, it was Pyright.
How to check?
Open Activity Monitor
Within the list of prcesses, find the one that has the highest CPU usage (it should ...
- 381
22
votes
What is the ApplicationsStorageExtension process on macOS?
Did you leave About This Mac open with Storage selected?
I think ApplicationsStorageExtension calculates how much storage your Mac is using.
To stop it:
Choose About This Mac from the Apple menu (...
- 489
19
votes
Accepted
High CPU usage by a process called PTPCamera
So we found the Solution:
Connect your iPhone/Camera and reopen Photos.app or iPhoto
Close iPhoto or Photos.app
Disconnect your iPhone/Camera
Open Photos/iPhoto again
now the PTPCamera Process ...
- 1,321
19
votes
what do App Memory, Wired Memory, and Compressed mean?
This wonderful Apple Support article says it all: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201464#memory
I'll give the short version here:
There are three different types of memory, as you have noticed - ...
- 3,649
17
votes
Accepted
How to find out process owner of unidentified windows?
Download and install Xcode.
When installed open Xcode.
In the menubar go to Xcode > open Developer tool > Accessibility inspector
In the Access..Inspector menu go to Inspection > Enable point to ...
- 194
17
votes
Accepted
Howto see disk I/O utilisation per process - iotop and pidstat not available in Homebrew on macOS
iotop is available in macOS/OS X itself.
iotop relies on dtrace though and you have to disable SIP in systems like El Capitan/Sierra to run dtrace.
Check man iotop for options and then execute iotop ...
- 65.3k
16
votes
Accepted
In activity monitor what time frame is the data sent / received data from?
For the top two figures, since last boot; for the bottom two, current.
After comments: It may be since launch of Activity Monitor - I have mine launch at boot & it stays open all the time, so I ...
- 109k
14
votes
How do I debug an out-of-control "kernel_task" process?
I had a similar question about how to identify files and programs connected to kernal_task using the following terminal command:
kextstat -l -k | awk '{n = sprintf("%d", $4); print n, $6}' | sort -n
...
- 685
14
votes
Accepted
View big.LITTLE cores on htop or similar utility
Pull core information using powermetrics, monitor with your favorite tool. However, be wary, and consider if it's worth the effort.
Identifying P/E cores
Unlike on iOS, this is thankfully quite easy ...
- 5,009
13
votes
Accepted
What is the Unknown (0) process with 232 threads on my iPhone?
pid 0 is always kernel_task in xnu. Further corroborated by being owned by root and having a lot of threads. It’s a synthetic process structure that represents the kernel. It isn’t malware.
- 4,647
12
votes
Accepted
Why is htop producing different reports than Activity Monitor?
In order to get accurate processes, cpu usage and accumulative time, the user running htop should be root. This is not the case with top, because it has the "set-user-ID-on-execution bit" (suid) set.
...
- 6,342
12
votes
My external monitor doesn't work at full resolution with my MacBook
Okay, so I managed to work out what the issue was in the end - it was OS X's handling of the EDID data from the monitor. Windows evidently could read the data just fine, which is why it worked ...
- 671
11
votes
VS Code - Code Helper process using more than 100% CPU on macOS
Killing processes on mac with kill -9 [PID] and restarting VSC helped me to solve the problem.
if not, refer to https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/11963#issuecomment-317830768
adding the ...
- 111
11
votes
Process "warmd" keep busy mac after upgrading to macOS 10.14.4
Have a read of the following;
Provisioning OSX and disabling unnecessary services
It has instructions on how to disable warmd. I can not confirm they are still relevant at this stage as I myself am ...
- 211
11
votes
Accepted
Why is my external HDD active when I'm not using it?
It's probably the 'Spotlight' indexing that is busy indexing the drive 's content.
- 666
10
votes
Accepted
What built-in utilities are available in macOS for managing/monitoring process/disk/memory/IO/file?
There are a lot of tools, both in the graphical interface and at the command line, for viewing and configuring these various parts of macOS' operations. I'll give you a summary of the most relevant ...
- 32.4k
9
votes
Is there a keyboard shortcut for launching Activity Monitor?
Create in Automator an Action to launch Activity Monitor:
Then in System Preferences -> Shortcuts Tab -> Services set a keyboard shortcut for the created service:
- 211
9
votes
icdd process consuming substantial memory on macOS
I have been working with a senior technical advisor at Apple on this issue for over a year, and was working with another senior advisor for some time before that. We have done "data capture" to send ...
- 91
9
votes
Process "warmd" keep busy mac after upgrading to macOS 10.14.4
It's supposed to "warm" the cache with your most frequently accessed applications and files.
If you have a "spinning rust" disk drive instead of an SSD, I can imagine that it may hurt more than help.
...
- 1,989
9
votes
Accepted
Why can I not maximize Activity Monitor to full screen?
Each application can opt in or out of full screen mode. From Apple's perspective, Activity Monitor is an "instrument", like a calculator or a multimeter, for example. You can test it on your ...
- 229k
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