This article describes some of the commonly used features of Activity Monitor, a kind of task manager that allows you see how apps and other processes are affecting your CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network usage.

• Mac Utility Tools For High Sierra Mac
• Mac Utility Tools For High Sierra Ranch

Apple's MacOS High Sierra update offers lots of behind-the-scenes changes that should make the Apple's desktop OS easy to use. High Sierra might disappoint those looking for whizzy new features.

A copy of the macOS High Sierra Installer App. This can be obtained from the Mac App Store using a machine that supports High Sierra, or by using the built-in downloading feature of the tool. In the Menu Bar, simply select 'Tools Download macOS High Sierra.' - A USB drive that's at least 8 GB in size. Aug 14, 2018  MultiBeast, the ultimate post-installation utility, has been updated to version 10.4.0 for macOS High Sierra 10.13.6. MultiBeast is an all-in-one post-installation utility designed to enable boot from a hard drive. It also features a collection. Using macOS High Sierra Disk Utility. Let’s take a walkthrough, in video format, of Disk Utility under macOS High Sierra. I’ll show you a real “gotcha,” the fact that Disk Utility hides.

Open Activity Monitor from the Utilities folder of your Applications folder, or use Spotlight to find it.

Overview

The processes shown in Activity Monitor can be user apps, system apps used by macOS, or invisible background processes. Use the five category tabs at the top of the Activity Monitor window to see how processes are affecting your Mac in each category.

Add or remove columns in each of these panes by choosing View > Columns from the menu bar. The View menu also allows you to choose which processes are shown in each pane:

• All Processes
• All Processes Hierarchically: Processes that belong to other processes, so you can see the parent/child relationship between them.
• My Processes: Processes owned by your macOS user account.
• System Processes: Processes owned by macOS.
• Other User Processes: Processes that aren’t owned by the root user or current user.
• Active Processes: Running processes that aren’t sleeping.
• Inactive Processes: Running processes that are sleeping.
• Windowed Processes: Processes that can create a window. These are usually apps.
• Selected Processes: Processes that you selected in the Activity Monitor window.
• Applications in the last 8 hours: Apps that were running processes in the last 8 hours.

CPU

The CPU pane shows how processes are affecting CPU (processor) activity:

Click the top of the “% CPU” column to sort by the percentage of CPU capability used by each process. This information and the information in the Energy pane can help identify processes that are affecting Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity.

More information is available at the bottom of the CPU pane:

• System: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by system processes, which are processes that belong to macOS.
• User: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by apps that you opened, or by the processes those apps opened.
• Idle: The percentage of CPU capability not being used.
• CPU Load: The percentage of CPU capability currently used by all System and User processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The color blue shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by user processes. The color red shows the percentage of total CPU capability currently used by system processes.
• Threads: The total number of threads used by all processes combined.
• Processes: The total number of processes currently running.

You can also see CPU or GPU usage in a separate window or in the Dock:

• To open a window showing current processor activity, choose Window > CPU Usage. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU Usage.
• To open a window showing recent processor activity, choose Window > CPU History. To show a graph of this information in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show CPU History.
• To open a window showing recent graphics processor (GPU) activity, choose Window > GPU History. Energy usage related to such activity is incorporated into the energy-impact measurements in the Energy tab of Activity Monitor.

Memory

The Memory pane shows information about how memory is being used:

More information is available at the bottom of the Memory pane:

• Memory Pressure: The Memory Pressure graph helps illustrate the availability of memory resources. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The current state of memory resources is indicated by the color at the right side of the graph:
  • Green: Memory resources are available.
  • Yellow: Memory resources are still available but are being tasked by memory-management processes, such as compression.
  • Red: Memory resources are depleted, and macOS is using your startup drive for memory. To make more RAM available, you can quit one or more apps or install more RAM. This is the most important indicator that your Mac may need more RAM.
• Physical Memory: The amount of RAM installed in your Mac.
• Memory Used: The total amount of memory currently used by all apps and macOS processes.
  • App Memory: The total amount of memory currently used by apps and their processes.
  • Wired Memory: Memory that can’t be compressed or paged out to your startup drive, so it must stay in RAM. The wired memory used by a process can’t be borrowed by other processes. The amount of wired memory used by an app is determined by the app's programmer.
  • Compressed: The amount of memory in RAM that is compressed to make more RAM memory available to other processes. Look in the Compressed Mem column to see the amount of memory compressed for each process.
• Swap Used: The space used on your startup drive by macOS memory management. It's normal to see some activity here. As long as memory pressure is not in the red state, macOS has memory resources available.
• Cached Files: Memory that was recently used by apps and is now available for use by other apps. For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit Mail, the RAM that Mail was using becomes part of the memory used by cached files, which then becomes available to other apps. If you open Mail again before its cached-files memory is used (overwritten) by another app, Mail opens more quickly because that memory is quickly converted back to app memory without having to load its contents from your startup drive.

For more information about memory management, refer to the Apple Developer website.

Energy

The Energy pane shows overall energy use and the energy used by each app:

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• Energy Impact: A relative measure of the current energy consumption of the app. Lower numbers are better. A triangle to the left of an app's name means that the app consists of multiple processes. Click the triangle to see details about each process.
• Avg Energy Impact: The average energy impact for the past 8 hours or since the Mac started up, whichever is shorter. Average energy impact is also shown for apps that were running during that time, but have since been quit. The names of those apps are dimmed.
• App Nap: Apps that support App Nap consume very little energy when they are open but not being used. For example, an app might nap when it's hidden behind other windows, or when it's open in a space that you aren't currently viewing.
• Preventing Sleep: Indicates whether the app is preventing your Mac from going to sleep.

More information is available at the bottom of the Energy pane:

• Energy Impact: A relative measure of the total energy used by all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency.
• Graphics Card: The type of graphics card currently used. Higher–performance cards use more energy. Macs that support automatic graphics switching save power by using integrated graphics. They switch to a higher-performance graphics chip only when an app needs it. 'Integrated' means the Mac is currently using integrated graphics. 'High Perf.' means the Mac is currently using high-performance graphics. To identify apps that are using high-performance graphics, look for apps that show 'Yes' in the Requires High Perf GPU column.
• Remaining Charge: The percentage of charge remaining on the battery of a portable Mac.
• Time Until Full: The amount of time your portable Mac must be plugged into an AC power outlet to become fully charged.
• Time on AC: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was plugged into an AC power outlet.
• Time Remaining: The estimated amount of battery time remaining on your portable Mac.
• Time on Battery: The time elapsed since your portable Mac was unplugged from AC power.
• Battery (Last 12 hours): The battery charge level of your portable Mac over the last 12 hours. The color green shows times when the Mac was getting power from a power adapter.

As energy use increases, the length of time that a Mac can operate on battery power decreases. If the battery life of your portable Mac is shorter than usual, you can use the Avg Energy Impact column to find apps that have been using the most energy recently. Quit those apps if you don't need them, or contact the developer of the app if you notice that the app's energy use remains high even when the app doesn't appear to be doing anything.

Disk

The Disk pane shows the amount of data that each process has read from your disk and written to your disk. It also shows 'reads in' and 'writes out' (IO), which is the number of times that your Mac accesses the disk to read and write data.

The information at the bottom of the Disk pane shows total disk activity across all processes. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing IO or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of reads per second or the amount of data read per second. The color red shows either the number of writes out per second or the amount of data written per second.

To show a graph of disk activity in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show Disk Activity.

Network

The Network pane shows how much data your Mac is sending or receiving over your network. Use this information to identify which processes are sending or receiving the most data.

The information at the bottom of the Network pane shows total network activity across all apps. The graph moves from right to left and updates at the intervals set in View > Update Frequency. The graph also includes a pop-up menu to switch between showing packets or data as a unit of measurement. The color blue shows either the number of packets received per second or the amount of data received per second. The color red shows either the number of packets sent per second or the amount of data sent per second.

To show a graph of network usage in your Dock, choose View > Dock Icon > Show Network Usage.

Cache

In macOS High Sierra 10.13.4 or later, Activity Monitor shows the Cache pane when Content Caching is enabled in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. The Cache pane shows how much cached content that local networked devices have uploaded, downloaded, or dropped over time.

Use the Maximum Cache Pressure information to learn whether to adjust Content Caching settings to provide more disk space to the cache. Lower cache pressure is better. Learn more about cache activity.

The graph at the bottom shows total caching activity over time. Choose from the pop-up menu above the graph to change the interval: last hour, 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days.

Learn more

• Learn about kernel task and why Activity Monitor might show that it's using a large percentage of your CPU.
• For more information about Activity Monitor, open Activity Monitor and choose Help > Activity Monitor. You can also see a short description of many items in the Activity Monitor window by hovering the mouse pointer over the item.

Back in the early days of the Internet, things weren’t quite as stable as they are now so system administrators created a suite of tools to help troubleshoot issues. Many old-timers wistfully remember the “fun” of typing in a ping command at the command line followed by an IP address, then waiting to see whether there was a response.

Likewise, traceroute was always useful for finding out where in the long chain of bounces between computer, routers and servers that communications between machines was breaking down. Apple put all of these useful tools into a single app called Network Utility, which up until 2014 could be found residing in the Application > Utilities folder. So where is Network Utility hiding these days, and how can it be used to troubleshoot network problems?

Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego Network Utility?
If Network Utility is no longer in the Utilities folder of the Mac, where is it? Looking at the path to the app, it’s hidden away in:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications

There are three much easier ways to find Network Utility and launch it without digging around in hidden folders. The first is to go to the Apple Menu, select About This Mac…, click on “System Report”, and then select Network Utility from the Windows menu. The second is even easier; click the Spotlight search icon (it looks like a magnifying glass) on the right side of the Mac menu bar, then type in “Network Utility” and press the return key. The last way? Just ask Siri — say “Launch Network Utility” and the app is immediately on your screen.

Network Utility and Info

Network Utility’s individual components can also be accessed from the Unix command line in Terminal, but that’s “beyond the scope of this course.” Just suffice it to say that if you really want to know the gory details of a command, you can type in “man name-of-command” (i.e., man netstat) and not only find out how to access that tool in Terminal, but all of the many options available.

Let’s look at each of the useful tools in Network Utility and how they can be used in troubleshooting.

Info
Info (see the image in the previous section) provides a drop-down menu that lists each of the network interfaces that are built into your Mac. For example, my late 2015 iMac shows Ethernet (en0), Wi-Fi (en1), Thunderbolt 1 (en2) and Thunderbolt 13 (en3). Selecting any one of those network interfaces provides a wealth of information, including the hardware address (MAC — Media Access Control address, a unique number assigned to each network interface), the IP address (IPv4), link speed, link status, vendor, and model.

The right side of the Info screen also shows how many data packets have been sent or received by the interface since the last time the Mac was restarted. If a number of errors or collisions are visible, there’s a good possibility that there’s a poor connection that is dropping packets. This often manifests itself as a slow connection to websites, slow downloads, and so on.

Netstat
Netstat is a bit esoteric for most Mac users who aren’t network administrators. It provides a way to examine your Mac’s network routing tables by displaying a summary of packet types sent and received using common network protocols – TCP, UDP, IP, ICMP, IGMP, IPSEC, IP6, ICMP6, IPSEC6, and PFKEY.

Network Utility – Netstat

Ping
Probably the most widely-used and useful tools in Network Utility is ping. It’s used to see whether your Mac can communicate with another device with a known network address — otherwise known as “pinging” that other device. For example, if I’m at my iMac (local network IP address 10.0.1.6) and I want to know if I can reach my AirPort Extreme router (local network IP address 10.0.1.1), I type the address I wish to ping into the field on the Ping pane of Network Utility, then click the Ping button.

Network Utility – Ping

By default, ping sends 10 packets to the other device, measuring the amount of time it takes for each ping to be received back at the iMac. If the response shows a timeout on any or all of the pings coming back, it indicates a bad connection between the Mac and the router, and I can start troubleshooting issues armed with that knowledge.

Lookup
If it weren’t for Domain Name System (DNS) servers, we’d all be typing numeric addresses into our web browsers to get to websites. DNS converts web addresses — like blog.macsales.com — to IP addresses so that our computers can carry on a conversation with a web server. Sometimes you may type in a web address and get a “server not found” error from the web browser. This usually indicates that you mistyped the address (like “blurg.macsales.com”), that there might be issues with the DNS server, or that that the DNS server address (entered in Network preferences) might be incorrect.

Lookup actually encompasses two underlying commands — nslookup and dig. Typing in an alphanumeric name for a website — say “apple.com” and clicking the Lookup button shows IP addresses that are associated with that domain name, while entering an IP address displays domains that are associated with that address. Oddly enough, entering the IP addresses that appear for “apple.com” returns “applecentre.info”, “AirTunes.info”, and “carbondating.com” as three possible domains. The first two addresses take you to the “apple.com” website, while the third goes off into oblivion. My guess? Apple uses these odd domain names as a way to fend off distributed denial of service attacks against the company.

Network Utility – Lookup

Mac Utility Tools For High Sierra Mac

Traceroute
One of the most useful tools in Network Utility is traceroute, which does exactly what the name implies — it traces the route between your Mac and another machine. Let’s see what happens when running traceroute from my iMac to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (uspto.gov).

Network Utility – Traceroute

Things start off on my local network (that 10.0.1.1 is my AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi router), then go through various Comcast systems to the Dallas, Texas area, then off to Washington, DC (wswdc) on the ATT network. Traceroute is fun in terms of just showing what a wild ride packets can take between your Mac and a web server.

Whois
Ever wanted to know what entity is behind a domain name? That’s what whois is all about. While many organizations now purchase privacy for domain name registration information, it’s still possible to find the domain registrar used by a website. This can be quite useful if you’re receiving spam from a particular email address and wish to complain to the domain registrar.

Finger
Think of finger as whois for individuals. Fortunately, it doesn’t work as well as it once did back in the original days of the Internet, when it was helpful for finding out who exactly was hiding behind an email address. Nowadays, a finger of a user name and domain address is likely to time out. That’s a good thing…

Port Scan
The last tab on the Network Utility window is Port Scan, useful for determining the status of various internet protocol ports on a particular machine. While your Mac is assigned a specific IP address, the various services that it uses — email, web browsing, and so on — are each assigned a TCP or UDP port number.

In a very secure world and on a very secure Mac, all ports would be closed — that’s the purpose of a firewall, which acts as a gatekeeper for a particular port and only allows specific traffic to enter through that port. But what you’ll find is that some ports are open — on this scan, I turned off my Mac’s built-in firewall (found in System Preferences > Firewall) and found that a number of ports were open:

Network Utility – Port Scan

To see what a particular port is used for, here’s a complete list. What I found is that some of the ports (445 and 4502) are used for Windows sharing and Silverlight; turning the Mac’s firewall back on did nothing to close those ports, which are apparently required by some of the apps that I use on this machine.

So there you have it! Not only is Network Utility still on your Mac, but it’s still a surprisingly useful tool for troubleshooting network issues.

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Mac Utility Tools For High Sierra Ranch