How Do I Check CPU and GPU Usage on Mac?
Your Mac comes with a built-in utility designed to show CPU and GPU usage, along with a lot of other helpful performance information. This Activity Monitor can be accessed through Spotlight or found in the Utilities folder. You can also set it to display real-time CPU usage information right on your Mac’s dock. Here’s how to check your CPU usage on a Mac:
How Do I Check CPU on the Dock?
If you want easy access to check your CPU usage at a glance, you can make the Activity Monitor dock icon display a graph. Here’s how to check your CPU usage on the Mac Dock:
How Do I Check My Mac Performance?
The easiest way to check your Mac performance is to use the Activity Monitor described above. The Activity Monitor lets you check the CPU and GPU usage, memory usage, energy usage, disk usage, and network usage, all of which contribute to overall performance. If any of these categories is close to 100 percent usage, that means you’re pushing your Mac to its limits with whatever task you’re trying to perform or game you’re trying to play. There’s nothing wrong with that, but 100 percent is all the machine can do.
Here’s what the different categories in the Activity Monitor mean and how they impact performance:
CPU: This shows you the CPU load or what percentage of your CPU’s capabilities are being used. You can see how much is being used by each app and process, along with a graph that shows total usage and historical usage. The CPU tab also lets you check GPU load or how much of your graphic processor’s capabilities are in use. Memory: This shows how much of your random access memory (RAM) is in use. Yellow and red on the memory pressure graph indicate that most of your RAM is in use, and you may be able to increase performance by adding additional RAM (if your Mac supports it-new M1 Macs do not support adding RAM). Energy: This tab shows how much energy your Mac uses, breaking it down by app. If you see apps using energy, and you don’t need them at the moment, you can close them to save energy. You can also close anything in the Preventing Sleep column if you want your Mac to conserve energy by sleeping when it isn’t in use. Disk: This shows the current and historical usage of your Mac’s storage media. Whether you have a hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state drive (SSD), it’s still called Disk. It’s where you can check the performance of your storage drive and see which apps are writing and reading data. Network: This tab breaks down your network usage, which is helpful if your internet connection has a limited amount of data per month. It also shows which apps send and receive data, which is useful if you’re trying to figure out why your internet connection seems slow. If one app uses all your bandwidth, other apps, like your web browser, will have less bandwidth.
