If you spend any time at all poking through Activity Monitor, you know that loads of processes run on any macOS system. But what do they do? Is it safe to force them to quit? We’ve got some answers for you.
You’re looking through Activity Monitor when you notice a process called blued. Should you be worried that this is running? No: it’s the process that powers Bluetooth on your Mac.
Sometimes you want to quickly run a Windows program, without restarting your Mac. Sometimes you need access to all your Mac’s computing power for a Windows program or game. All of this makes it hard to decide whether you should dual boot with Boot Camp or use a virtual machine.
Thanks to the switch from PowerPC to Intel many years ago, a Mac is just another PC. Sure, Macs come with macOS, but you can easily install Windows alongside macOS using Apple’s built-in Boot Camp feature.
Sharing files over the network is convenient, but not without risks. If you leave permissions open, anyone on the network can see all of your files, which isn’t ideal on large networks. But if you lock things down you’ll have to share your Mac’s user account with anyone who needs access to the files. That’s not ideal for all sorts of reasons.
It’s a time-honored hack: editing the hosts file on your computer to block websites, create local re-directs, and otherwise change what happens when you type particular domains into you address bar.
Excited about High Sierra, but don’t want to wait until autumn? The public beta is now available to try; here’s how to install it.
Your Mac’s fans probably aren’t something you think about very often—until something goes wrong. Maybe you hear the fan too often, and it’s driving you nuts. Maybe you’ve stopped hearing your fan altogether, even when you Mac feels hot. Either way, you should probably look into that.
While checking the Activity Monitor, you noticed something called WindowServer occasionally taking up a bunch of CPU power. Is this process safe?
Let’s be honest: Siri for Mac isn’t as exciting as we thought it would be. There’s no really fast way to trigger the virtual assistant, and for some reason she feels slower to respond on a Mac than she does on your phone.
Your Mac is acting funny, and you’ve tried everything: restarting your computer, resetting the NVRAM, and all the tricks that speed up a slow Mac. You even ran 50+ diagnostics at once to see what’s going on, and yet you find nothing. What’s the next step?
You hear your Mac’s fans running, so you check Activity Monitor. Turns out something called “installd” is taking up a bunch of CPU power. What’s going on?
RetroArch is the ultimate all-in-one emulator, compatible with every system you can imagine. From classic Nintendo consoles to arcade boxes and even the Playstation or Wii, RetroArch brings massive gaming collections under one roof.
Macs are very stable, but not every Mac application is. Every once in a while, something you’re using is going to crash. Sometimes this means the spinning beach ball of death, sometimes this means clicking an open window doesn’t do anything, no matter what you try. Sometimes the Dock indicates an application is open, but you can’t seem to find or open any windows.
So you found something called “kernel_task” in Activity Monitor, and you want to know what it is. Good news: it’s nothing nefarious. It’s actually your operating system.
While checking out Activity Monitor, you noticed a couple of processes you don’t recognize: mds and mdworker. Neither have an icon, and they seem to be running constantly. Don’t worry, they’re harmless.
You settle in to do some work, but first, you check email for a second. Okay, now work. Wait: let’s check Facebook. Work now? In a bit: first Twitter, then back to email, then Facebook one more time in case anyone responded.
Some of the coolest new features in the upcoming macOS 10.13 High Sierra are in Safari, and you can try them out now without upgrading your entire operating system.
You recognize most of the processes you see while browsing Activity Monitor, but not hidd. The name is cryptic, and there’s no icon for you to recognize. Should you be worried?
If you share your Mac with someone else, it’s a good idea to create a different user account for each of you. That way, you don’t see your husband’s email notifications, or have to sift through his bookmarks.. Here’s how to add a new account to your Mac.
Ever wish you could switch users instantly by pressing a button? Thanks to TouchID on the MacBook Pro, all it takes is the correct fingerprints.
Two-sided printing is great in theory, because it uses less paper for multi-page documents. It’s also frustrating when you forget to turn the option off when you don’t need it.
Sometimes, Mac users need to run Windows software. Maybe there’s a program you need for work that doesn’t offer a Mac version, or maybe you occasionally need to test websites in Internet Explorer. Whatever you need Windows for, Parallels is the best tool for the job.
It’s the most famous number on the internet: 140. That’s how many characters you can use in a tweet, and it’s as core to Twitter’s brand as #hashtags, Trending Topics, and ignoring harassment victims.
You’re closing a Terminal window, only to be told that doing so will terminate a running process. Which is confusing, because you didn’t know anything was still running at all.
