Do you like keeping track of what’s happening with the vital elements of your Mac? You can use the Activity Monitor app to view detailed information about the processes running on your Mac and how they affect CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network.
While the app itself provides a lot of detail, it can also give you a brief status indicator via the app icon in the Dock. You can change it to show the general state of each component.
Activity Monitor has four different icons that graphically track activity on your Mac:
- CPU Usage: Displays how busy the CPU is currently.
- Processor history: Shows how busy the CPU is for a short period of time.
- Network Usage: Displays a trend line for the amount of network activity between your Mac and the local network.
- Disk activity: Shows activity between Mac and storage device.
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How to change the Activity Monitor application icon to a monitor
The Activity Monitor application must be open and must remain open to report any activity.
1. With the application open, go to the Dock and right-click the Activity Monitor icon.
2. In the pop-up menu, move the cursor to dock icon.
3. Another pop-up menu will appear with monitors you can choose from. You can select one of them and the application icon in the Dock will change to a monitor that graphically shows the load that this component is under. Click on your choice.
The activity monitor icon will change to the monitor you selected. If you look at the icon in the Dock, you’ll see activity indicators showing how busy that component is.