What load average means on a Mac, and what is high for your number of cores
Our 8 core M1 showed load averages of 2.9, 3.6 and 4.6. What the three numbers mean, why they are not percentages, and when they say the Mac is overloaded.
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Mac storage, explained.
What fills your disk, where it hides, and what is safe to remove. Every guide gives you a way to check it on your own Mac.
How to check CPU usage on a Mac from Terminal
top, ps and a one line command show total and per process CPU on a Mac. Ours was 10% user, 13% system, 77% idle. Why one app can show more than 100%.
How to check disk activity on a Mac, and which process is reading and writing
iostat shows how hard the SSD is working; fs_usage shows who. Our MacBook Air ran 262 to 421 operations a second at 5 to 8 MB/s at rest. How to read both.
How to check how long your Mac has been running, and when to restart
uptime shows how long since the last restart. Ours had run 1 day 6 hours with 4 GB of swap built up. How to check it and why a restart now and then helps.
How many processes does a Mac normally run? 537 on ours, and why that is fine
A Mac runs hundreds of processes at once. Ours had 537 and 3,500 threads, nearly all asleep. What they are, why the count is normal, and which ones matter.
Why you cannot quit some processes on a Mac, and what to do instead
System processes run as root or their own users, and macOS restarts most of them anyway. Which ones you can quit, which you should not, and how to tell them apart.
What is launchd on a Mac, and why would it use CPU?
launchd is process 1: it starts everything else on a Mac. It used 1.8% CPU and 24 MB on ours, with 540 jobs loaded. When it spikes, a job is crashing and restarting.
Dock using CPU or memory on a Mac: what it runs besides the Dock
The Dock process also runs Mission Control, Launchpad, Spaces and wallpaper. It used up to 4% CPU and 43 MB on our Mac. What drives it up and how to reset it.
What is com.apple.WebKit.WebContent on a Mac, and which app does it belong to?
WebKit processes run web pages for Safari, Mail and any app with a web view. One used 138 MB on our Mac. How to find the app or tab behind a busy one.
What is FindMyWidgetPeople on a Mac, and why is it running?
FindMyWidgetPeople is the Find My People widget's helper. It showed an energy impact of 2.0 and 18 to 24 MB on our Mac. Why it runs, and how to stop it.
What is powerd on a Mac, and why does it say it is preventing sleep?
powerd manages sleep, wake and power settings. On our Mac pmset said sleep was prevented by powerd, which only meant the screen was on. How to read it.
What is symptomsd on a Mac?
symptomsd watches network health and keeps per app network usage. It ran as _networkd at 0.4% to 0.6% CPU and 5 to 9 MB on our Mac. What it does and when it spikes.