Task Manager on Mac: Activity Monitor and Force Quit

How to force quit an app on a Mac

Force quitting closes an app at once, without letting it save, so you lose any changes you haven't saved. Try a normal quit first (Command-Q) and give the app a few seconds. If it still doesn't respond, any of these work:

• The keyboard: press Option-Command-Esc. The Force Quit Applications window lists your open apps and marks the frozen one as not responding. Select it and click Force Quit. This is the Mac's Ctrl-Alt-Delete.
• The Apple menu: choose Apple menu › Force Quit, which opens the same window.
• The Dock: Control-click the app's icon and hold down the Option key; Quit turns into Force Quit.
• Activity Monitor: select the app, click the Stop button (✕) in the toolbar, then Force Quit. Use this for an app that has no window or Dock icon, such as a helper or a menu bar app.
• Terminal: killall "App Name" quits every process with that name. Add -9 after killall only if it ignores the first try.

The Finder can't be quit, only restarted: select it in the Force Quit window and the button reads Relaunch. Your files aren't affected.

When the whole Mac is frozen

If the pointer doesn't move or Option-Command-Esc does nothing, wait a minute first; a Mac that is short of memory or disk space can come back on its own. If it doesn't:

1. Press and hold the power button, or Touch ID on a laptop, for about ten seconds until the screen goes black.
2. Wait a few seconds, then press it again to start up.
3. When macOS asks whether to reopen your windows, say no if one of the apps was the cause.

If it keeps happening, check that you have at least 10 to 15 percent of your disk free, install macOS and app updates, and see how to speed up a slow Mac.

How to open Activity Monitor

• Press ⌘ Space for Spotlight, type Activity Monitor and press Return.
• Or, in the Finder, open Applications › Utilities › Activity Monitor.
• To keep it handy, Control-click its Dock icon while it is open and choose Options › Keep in Dock. View › Dock Icon can turn that icon into a live CPU or memory graph.

What each Activity Monitor tab shows

View › All Processes lists everything, including other users' and the system's; View › My Processes only yours. Double-click a process, or select it and click the info button (ⓘ), to see its parent process, open files and ports, and to Sample it if you need to send a developer a report.

Processes you'll see, and should leave alone

• kernel_task is macOS itself. High CPU here usually means it is keeping the processor busy on purpose to cool the Mac down; quitting it isn't possible.
• WindowServer draws everything on screen. It works harder with many windows, external displays and transparency effects.
• mds, mds_stores and mdworker are Spotlight indexing, which runs hard for a while after a macOS update or when you copy many files.
• photoanalysisd, bird and cloudd are Photos analysis and iCloud syncing; backupd is Time Machine. They calm down once they catch up.

A process with a name you don't recognise isn't necessarily malware: most Mac apps run several helpers. Select it and click the info button to see which app it belongs to. If it belongs to no app you installed, keeps coming back after a restart and uses the CPU or network in the background, scan your Mac.

Activity Monitor with Tidy My Mac

• Performance lists apps with their helpers counted in, so a browser is one row instead of twelve, and says in plain words when an app keeps the CPU busy, holds too much memory or makes your Mac run hot. Each row has Quit and Force Quit.
• Background Services shows the helpers that keep running after you quit their app, and Startup Items the ones that start every time you log in.
• Antivirus scans your Mac if a process you don't recognise looks suspicious.