How To Open Task Manager On Mac, Linux, Windows

This article will tell you how to open the task manager on Mac, Linux, Windows. It will also tell you how to use the task manager to manage program processes as well.

1. How To Open Task Manager On Mac.

1.1 The Steps To Open Task Manager On Mac.

1. Open a Finder window on macOS.
2. Then click the Applications item on the window’s left side.
3. Click the Utilities —> Activity Monitor item on the window’s right side.
4. Then it will open the Activity Monitor (My Processes) window.
5. It will list all the processes that are currently running for the login user.
6. There are 5 tabs in the window, they are CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, Network.
7. In the Energy tab, each row represents a mac app.
8. In the other tabs, each row represents a process.

1.2 How To Stop ( Force Quit ), Inspect, Or Diagnostic A Mac Process.

1.2.1 Stop ( Force Quit ) Process.

1. Click the process that you want to stop or diagnose in the mac Activity Monitor window.
2. Click the Stop button on the window top left corner to stop it.
3. When you click the stop button, it will prompt a confirm dialog that contains 3 buttons ( Cancel, Force Quit, Quit ).
4. Click the Force Quit or Quit button to stop the process.

1.2.2 Inspect Selected Process.

1. If you want to see a specified process’s detailed information, you can click the Inspect selected process button beside the Stop button.
2. Then it will popup a dialog and show the selected process’s CPU usage, memory usage, parent process, Open Files and Ports and other statistical information.

1.2.3 Diagnostic Process.

1. The System diagnostics options button is located beside the Inspect selected process button.
2. It is a drop-down button, when you click it, it will show 4 options ( Sample Process, Spindump, System Diagnostics…, Spotlight Diagnostics… ).
3. You can click each option to run the process diagnostics.

2. How To Open Task Manager On Linux.

2.1 The Steps To Open Task Manager On Linux.

1. I will use Ubuntu as an example, you can operate on other Linux OS like it.
2. Click the Show Applications icon on the Ubuntu OS bottom left corner.
3. Input the keyword System Monitor in the search box and press enter key.
4. Then click the System Monitor icon in the list below the search box.
5. Then it will open the System Monitor window.
6. There are 3 tabs in the window, they are Processes, Resources, File Systems.
7. Click the Processes tab will list all the processes that are running.
8. Right-click the selected process, then it will pop up a menu list that contains some menu items.
9. The menu items contain Properties, Memory Maps, Open Files, Change Priority, Stop, Continue, End, Kill.
10. The menu items are very straightforward, you can understand its meaning by the name.

3. How To Open Task Manager On Windows.

3.1 The Steps To Open Task Manager On Windows.

1. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del at the same time.
2. Then click the Task Manager button to open the Windows task manager window.
3. You can click the Detail Information icon on the task manager window bottom left corner to expand the processes.
4. Then you can find the processes are grouped by the application name.
5. Maximize the task manager window, you can see the detailed information ( CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, GPU, Battery’s usage ) for each process in each row.
6. If you want to stop a process, you can right-click the process, and click the End Task menu item in the popup menu list.