Geek Posted March 30, 2012 Posted March 30, 2012 <div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/dock-activity-monitor.jpg" alt="Dock Activity Monitor in Mac OS X" title="dock-activity-monitor" width="620" height="209" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28982" /></p> <p><a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/15/mac-task-manager/">Activity Monitor</a> can be used for more than just managing tasks and killing processes, it can also turn the Mac OS X Dock into a live system monitor where you can keep an eye on processor usage, CPU history, network activity, disk activity, or RAM use. </p> <ol> <li>Launch Activity Monitor, found in /Applications/Utilities/</li> <li>Right-click on the Dock icon and scroll up to the “Dock Icon” submenu and select one of five available options:</li> <ul> <li><strong>Show CPU Usage</strong> – this is a live gauge of processor activity on the Mac, each CPU core is shown as a separate bar, this is probably the most useful of the five choices (shown up top)</li> <li><strong>Show CPU History</strong> – this shows processor load and use graphed over time, each CPU core is shown separately</li> <li><strong>Show Network Usage</strong> – displays a graph of incoming (green) and outgoing (red) network traffic, this can be helpful if you’re on a sketchy internet connection or are carefully conserving bandwidth</li> <li><strong>Show Disk Activity</strong> – shows a live graph of disk reads (green) and writes (red) in the same format as Network Usage</li> <li><strong>Show Memory Usage</strong> – displays a pie chart of current RAM usage and allocation on the Mac, green is free memory, red is wired, yellow is active, and blue is inactive memory</li> </ul> </ol> <p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/enable-activity-monitor-dock.jpg" alt="Enable the Dock Activity Monitor in Mac OS X" title="enable-activity-monitor-dock" width="620" height="303" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28972" /></p> <p>If you find yourself using this often, you may want to pin Activity Monitor to the Dock by right-clicking and choosing “Keep in Dock” from the Options submenu. </p> <p>Here is what the memory usage pie chart looks like: <img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/activity-monitor-memory-use.jpg" alt="Activity Monitor showing Memory Usage" title="activity-monitor-memory-use" width="620" height="120" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28974" /></p> <p>And here is what Disk Activity and Network Activity look like: <img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/activity-monitor-disk-activity.jpg" alt="Activity Monitor showing Disk Activity " title="activity-monitor-disk-activity" width="620" height="131" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28975" /></p> <p>If the Dock isn’t your thing, the <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/24/show-system-activity-menu-bar-mac/">iStat Menu bar item</a> offers similar features in the menu bar.</p> <p><em>Thanks to <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/27/remove-auto-hide-dock-delay-mac-os-x/#comment-366112">Roman for the tip idea</a></em></p> </div> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u9NRBXiOfzCaYM-HkCSK09XarJM/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u9NRBXiOfzCaYM-HkCSK09XarJM/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u9NRBXiOfzCaYM-HkCSK09XarJM/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/u9NRBXiOfzCaYM-HkCSK09XarJM/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=7Seq5BAP690:5b345GZL8Ls:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/osxdaily/~4/7Seq5BAP690" height="1" width="1"/> View the full article
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