Mac Task Manager: how to open it and end frozen apps

How to open Task Manager on a Mac

Activity Monitor is in every Mac, with the same name on macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27. Any of these opens it (Apple, Open apps on Mac):

• Spotlight: press Command-Space, type "Activity Monitor" (the first few letters are usually enough) and press Return. This is the closest thing to pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc on Windows.
• Finder: open Applications in the sidebar, then the Utilities folder, and double-click Activity Monitor.
• From the Dock: on macOS 15, click Launchpad; on macOS 26 and 27, click the Apps icon, which opens Spotlight's app view. Then type its name.
• Siri: ask Siri to open Activity Monitor.

To keep it one click away, open it once, Control-click its Dock icon and choose Options › Keep in Dock.

Is there a Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a Mac?

Not as such. On Windows 11, Microsoft describes Ctrl+Alt+Del as switching to a security screen where you can lock the PC, sign out or open Task Manager (Microsoft). On a Mac, those jobs are split up. The one people usually want, ending a frozen app, is Option-Command-Esc, which opens the Force Quit Applications window (Apple, How to force an app to quit on Mac). Apple's article spells the keys as "Option (or Alt), Command, and Esc", and on a keyboard made for Windows PCs, Apple says the Windows logo key or Ctrl stands in for Command (Apple, Mac keyboard shortcuts).

The rest, translated:

Give Activity Monitor a keyboard shortcut

Apple doesn't give Activity Monitor a keyboard shortcut of its own, but the Shortcuts app can add one:

1. Open Shortcuts (in Applications) and create a new shortcut.
2. Search the actions for Open App, add it, and choose Activity Monitor as the app.
3. Open the shortcut's details and click Add Keyboard Shortcut, then press the keys you want, such as Control-Shift-Esc if you'd like to keep your Windows habit (Apple, Run a shortcut while working on your Mac).

Apple notes that some key combinations are reserved for the system and can't be used. If yours doesn't work, try another.

Windows Task Manager tabs, and where they are on a Mac

Windows Task Manager has pages called Processes, Performance, Users, Details and Services (Microsoft Learn), plus Startup apps. Activity Monitor covers most of them, and System Settings covers the rest:

Activity Monitor also has an Energy tab, which ranks apps by energy use and, on Mac laptops, shows each app's average over the last 12 hours, plus Disk and Network tabs, all per process. Activity Monitor on Mac explains what each tab's numbers mean and which ones to ignore.

How to end a task on a Mac

Activity Monitor's version of End task:

1. Select the app or process in the list. Type part of its name in the search field at the top right if the list is long.
2. Click the Stop button at the top left of the window.
3. Choose Quit, which asks the app to close normally, or Force Quit, which ends it immediately. Apple warns that with Force Quit, "if the process has files open, you may lose data" (Apple).

Two differences from Windows. First, apps on a Mac often keep running after you close their last window, so a "missing" app may still be open; Command-Q quits it. Second, there's no "run as administrator": Activity Monitor already shows every user's processes under View › All Processes, warns you before you quit one that belongs to macOS or another user, and asks for an administrator password when it needs one. Treat that as a reason to stop: ending macOS's own processes rarely fixes anything, and quitting loginwindow logs you out. For every other way to close a stuck app, including Terminal and what to do when Force Quit fails, see how to force quit on a Mac.

Restart Finder or the Dock, like restarting Explorer

If you're used to restarting Windows Explorer when the desktop or taskbar hangs, the Mac has its own versions. For Finder (your files, folders and the desktop), press Option-Command-Esc, select Finder and click Relaunch (Apple). The Dock isn't in that window; in Activity Monitor, search for Dock, select it, click the Stop button and choose Quit, and macOS starts it again on its own. Neither touches your files. If the whole Mac has stopped responding, see how to force restart a Mac.

Watch CPU from the Dock

Activity Monitor can turn its Dock icon into a live graph. Choose View › Dock Icon, then Show CPU Usage or Show CPU History; the same menu has Show Network Usage and Show Disk Activity (Apple, View CPU activity). Window › CPU Usage opens a small floating graph instead. The Dock icon only updates while Activity Monitor is open, so keep it running in the background.

By default the list refreshes every 5 seconds; View › Update Frequency makes it faster or slower (Apple).

Finding what's slowing the Mac down

The habit from Windows, sorting by CPU and memory, works here too, with one change: on a Mac, high "memory used" is normal, because macOS fills spare memory with cached files. Read the Memory Pressure graph instead; green is fine (Apple). And % CPU is per core, so one busy app can show more than 100%. How to check RAM usage on a Mac and Why is my Mac so slow? take it from there.

Other task managers for Mac

• Terminal's top. Type top -o cpu and press Return for a live list sorted by CPU, or top -o mem for memory. It only reads; press q to quit it.
• Menu bar monitors. If you'd rather see CPU and memory at a glance without opening a window, Stats is free and open source and iStat Menus is paid and goes deeper; Stats vs iStat Menus compares them.

Activity Monitor remains the one to use for ending tasks: it's built in, made by Apple and covers every process.

How Tend helps

If you'd like a task manager that answers "what's using my battery?" directly, Tend's free Energy & Apps page lists your apps by estimated power in watts, alongside CPU and memory, with Quit and Force Quit on each one, and an Energy over time card covering the last 24 hours (7 and 30 days with Pro). The watts are Tend's estimates, not meter readings. Activity Monitor is still the better tool for Disk, Network and inspecting a single process.

Questions

Related guides

Sources

• Apple, How to force an app to quit on Mac
• Apple, Mac keyboard shortcuts
• Apple, Open apps on Mac (macOS 15, 26 and 27)
• Apple, Run a shortcut while working on your Mac
• Apple, Quit an app or process in Activity Monitor on Mac
• Apple, View CPU activity in Activity Monitor on Mac and Change how often information is updated
• Apple, Check if your Mac needs more RAM in Activity Monitor
• Microsoft, Keyboard shortcuts in Windows and Troubleshoot processes by using Task Manager

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