With the continuous usage of the Mac there can be many applications running on it. These running applications on the Mac take lots of resources and will slow down the Mac. So, the main question arises is How do I see what is running in the background on my mac?
Here we will tell you how to view all open apps on a mac and how to turn off programs running in the background Mac?
There are different methods using which we can see all the running apps on the computer and using these methods we can also close the running applications. Closing the running applications will free up the resources and will speed up the Mac. Some applications will continue to run even if we close them. So, there can be many applications running on the Mac.
Table of Contents
We can normally quit the application or we can force quit them.
- Normal Quit: This is a normal and safe way to quit an application. We can normally quit the application by selecting the app and clicking on Quit.
- Force Quit: This will directly quit the application. Force quit an application is necessary when the application stops responding.
Ways to see running applications on the Mac.
How to check all open apps on mac using The Dock
One of the easiest and most common ways to check applications running on the Mac is from the Dock. Applications that are currently running on the Mac will be displayed on the Dock. Also, the running app will have small dot below its icon.
Once the running application is closed then the dots will be removed from the app icon.
However, if you do not see the dots below the app icon you can enable it from the System Preferences. You can enable using the steps below:
Click on the Apple icon located in the upper-left corner of your screen then go to System Preferences > Dock and then check “Show indicators for open applications” option.
From the Dock we can force quit the running application directly. To force quit the applications you have to right-click on the icon of the app from the Dock and then click Quit or Force Quit.
How to see all running apps on Mac using Force quit menu
Mac Operating System comes with Force Quit Menu that will help you to view running applications on your Mac. You can also use this menu to close the running applications.
To open the Force Quit Menu Press Option, Command, and Esc (Escape) key together.
OR
You can select Force Quit Menu from the Apple menu.
Using Force Quit Applications menu will also let you quit unresponsive applications on your Mac.
How to see all active apps on Mac using Activity monitor
Activity Monitor is a simple application of the Mac that will display all your Mac resources used by your system in real-time. Activity Monitor includes processes, memory usage, disk activity, and other information of your Mac.
Activity Monitor will show you CPU, Disk activity, and RAM information of the Mac. We will learn how these will affect the
Activity Monitor will show all the active applications and processes running on the Mac. Activity Monitor can be opened from /Applications/Utilities/.
In the Activity Monitor you can see memory, CPU, disk, energy, and network usage in individual tabs. Each different tab will show the different processes affecting each other.
Activity Monitor can be used to quit running application and processes on the Mac:
- Look for the application you want to close or the application that is not responding and click on the X sign.
How to view all open apps on a Mac using Terminal
Terminal application on the Mac will let you enter using the Command Line. You can run the Terminal application from Applications > Utilities. Terminal application will help you to check the running applications on the Mac. You have to enter the following commands to check for the running applications.
top -ocpu -s 5
Display all running processes sorted by CPU usage, updating every 5 seconds
top -o rsize
Display all running processes sorted by memory usage
ps aux
Shows you the processes active under the current user.
ps aux|more
This will also list the active processes.
That’s it you can now see all the running applications on Mac and you can close them easily.
Use a third party program to optimize your Mac easily also you can remove applications from Mac using TuneupMyMac.
Macs need optimization from time to time. To keep the Mac optimized every time we need to use TuneupMyMac at regular intervals.
TuneupMyMac contains many features that will help you to keep your Mac optimized all the time. It is one of the best Optimization tools for your Mac.
Features Of TuneupMyMac
One Click Cleaning :
One-click cleaning feature will help you to optimize your Mac in a single click. It will clean your Mac from system caches, log files, Team files, and unused languages.
Find and Remove Duplicate Files:
This program is capable of removing duplicate Files.
Uninstall Unwanted Apps :
This program will help you to remove unwanted applications from your Mac.
Remove Unneeded Application From Startup:
Use this program to move applications from running at start-up.
There are many other features in TuneupMyMac that will help you to optimize the Mac easily.
You can check the program from here.
Verdict:
We hope that this article helps you to check the application running on your Mac and using this article you can also stop the application from running in the background.
