The most powerful app and process management utility in the Mac OS X GUI, Activity Monitor is a powerful task manager that will reveal not only all running and active applications, but also all active and inactive processes. View All Running Apps & Processes with Activity Monitor The primary limitation with the Force Quit Menu is that, like the Dock indicators, it is limited to revealing only the “windowed apps” that are actively running in Mac OS X, thus skipping over things like menu bar items and background apps. This simplified version is fairly similar to the basic “Control+ALT+DELETE” manager that exists initially in the modern Windows world. One obvious advantage to the Command+Option+ESC menu is that it allows you to actually take action on running apps directly, letting you force quit them if they have become errant or are shown in red font, which signifies they are not responding or are crashing. This shows an easy to read list of all active applications running in MacOS X, and what’s visible here is exactly the same as what you’d see in the Dock:ĭespite the windows name, you can use this to view actively running programs and apps without actually quitting them.

Hit Command+Option+Escape to summon the basic “Force Quit Applications” window, which can be thought of as a simple task manager for Mac OS X. See All Running Applications / Programs with Forceable Quit Menu

Fortunately, there are better ways to see what’s running on a Mac, and also be able to take direct action if there is a need to quit an app or two. Additionally, those little glowing indicators are small and not that obvious, and many people don’t notice them at all.

Though there’s nothing wrong with using this approach, it’s obviously a bit limited since it only shows what are called “windowed” apps – that is, apps that are running in the GUI front end of Mac OS X – and it’s also limited in that you can’t take direct action with them. If you see a little glowing dot under the application icon, it’s open and running. The simplest way to see what apps are running at the moment is to just glance at the Mac OS X Dock. At a Glance: Looking at the Dock to See Running Mac Apps

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