I'm new to Mac OS X. Sometimes my system hangs, and I cannot do anything with it. In Windows, I would use Task Manager to stop the unwanted application, but in Mac OS X, what option is available? When my Mac has hung, I have used "Activity Monitor" only. Are there any other options available in Mac OS X?
6 Answers
If you just want to kill hanging apps try pressing cmd+alt+esc. This opens a mini version of activity monitor, which allows you to select and kill any hanging applications.
3You want to use Activity Monitor in your /Applications/Utilities folder. This is the equivalent of Windows Task Manager. It will give you a full list of all processes running on your computer at that time, importantly the ones running in the background. However, be careful what you decide to kill because it can make your system temporarily unstable (requiring a reboot) if you don't know what you're doing.
1You can right-click on the icon of a running/hanging application in the Dock. If it is not responding, the usual Quit is turned into Force Quit.If the program is running fine, but you want to force quit anyway, hold alt.
I used the Terminal with the command top -o vsize to see wich program is consuming more memory, then i killed with kill PID or killall PROGRAM. I like these because is lighter than Monitor Activity.
in Terminal application you can type
ps -eto list all the processes. each one has a pid which you can stop by typing
kill pidreplacing pid with the actual process number
I like to add a link to iStatMenus. It shows cpu, ram consumption, disk usage and a lot more in the menubar.
(It's a shame that isn't integrated in Mac OS X)
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