How do you know what apps are running on your Mac right now?

Knowing what apps are running on your Mac is incredibly important, since you can target and close those that you don’t want to use. However, it’s very common for many of us to start lots of apps and leave them running, even if we don’t really need them. That leads to a lot of resources being consumed unnecessarily. Not only can it bring higher CPU temperatures, but the Mac performance is lower too. Here’s what you should do.

Enter the Activity Monitor

Here you can see a list with all currently running apps and processes. Keep in mind that some apps will have multiple processes running at once. It’s a good idea to check the CPU percentage for these apps and see which ones consume the most resources. Right click and terminate that process, and you should see your Mac should be running much better than normal.

Use the Force Quit window

If you want to see which are the currently running programs, you can also enter the Force Quit window by pressing Command+Option+Escape. It might be the more extreme option, but it helps because your Mac notifies you which apps are currently open. You can choose an app you want to force quit, and your Mac will forcefully stop that app, even if it doesn’t shut down on its own.

Use the App Switcher

App Switcher is an underrated feature, and one that more people should use. You can access it via pressing Command and holding it, then you press Tab. Now a row of apps will appear, and these are the currently running ones. You can press Tab to cycle through and reach the app you want.

Use a Mac cleanup tool

A cleanup tool will show you what’s currently running and you can also quit any of the running apps as well. You can also see the top CPU consumers, clear memory, stop apps and so on. These tools are great for maintenance too, so it’s one of the top ways to monitor and manage resource consumption for your Mac.

Check your Dock

Of course, the easiest way to ensure you know the currently running apps is to just check the Dock. Usually, in the dock you will find all the currently running apps, and they have a dot under them. That means the apps are active and currently being used. Sometimes the dock will hide if you programmed it to do so, in that case you can move the mouse to the bottom of your screen, and it reappears.

To recap

It’s always a great idea to see what apps are running on your Mac, so you can better manage them. Sometimes, there are apps that consume a lot of resources, yet you’re not using them. Thanks to those tools like the Activity Monitor or Force Quit, you will find it much easier to manage and eliminate those issues. We highly recommend using these tools and tips above to track/manage your apps to enhance your Mac’s performance!