View information about Mac processes in Activity Monitor (2024)

In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, do any of the following:

• Get information about a process: Select the process, then double-click it or click the Info button in the Activity Monitor window (or use the Touch Bar).

• Sort processes: Click a column heading to sort the list.

• Reverse the order of items in the column: Click the arrow in the selected column heading.

• See general information about all processes: Click CPU in the Activity Monitor window (or use the Touch Bar). Information about the number of open processes and threads appears at the bottom of the window.

• Search for a process: Enter the name of a process or app in the search field.

You can choose which columns you want to display in the Activity Monitor window.

• In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, choose View > Columns, then choose the columns you want to show (columns that are visible have a checkmark).

In the Activity Monitor app on your Mac, in the View menu, choose one of the following:

• All Processes: Shows all the processes running on your Mac.

• All Processes, Hierarchically: Shows processes that belong to other processes, so you can see the parent/child relationship between them.

• My Processes: Shows processes owned by your user account.

• System Processes: Shows processes owned by macOS.

• Other User Processes: Shows processes that aren’t owned by root or the current user.

• Active Processes: Shows running processes that aren’t sleeping.

• Inactive Processes: Shows running processes that are sleeping.

• GPU Processes: Shows running processes owned by the computer’s GPU.

• Windowed Processes: Shows processes that can create a window. These processes are usually apps.

• Selected Processes: Shows only processes you selected in the Activity Monitor window.

• Applications in last 12 hours: Show only the apps running processes in the last 12 hours.

• Processes, by GPU: Shows running GPU processes grouped by GPU.