Terminal Hacks - Monitor System Activity

This hack will show you how to display system information (process statistics and resource usage) as well as a real time list of processes and threads that are currently running. An alternative to having to open the Activity Monitor application on your Mac.

James Pearson

James Pearson

Sheffield, UK

Terminal Hacks - Monitor System Activity

Show System Activity Monitor

Open Terminal: Finder > Applications > Utilities

In Terminal, type or paste the following…

top

(return)

An example of the system activity process in Terminal. — An example of the system activity process in Terminal.

By default %CPU is the default sort column (highlighted in white).

To exit the activity monitor, type or paste the following…

(return)

Show System Activity Monitor and Define a Column to Sort By

Open Terminal: Finder > Applications > Utilities

In Terminal, type or paste one of the following…

top -o cpu

To sort by %CPU [central processing unit usage]

top -o mem

To sort by %MEM [memory usage]

top -o pid

To sort by PID [a task's unique process ID]

top -o time

To sort by TIME [the amount of time in hundredths of a second a process has run for since last reboot]

top -o command

To sort by COMMAND [the command that initiated the process]

(return)

::TIP:: you can sort by any column displayed in the activity monitor simply type the columns name after top -o.

Terminating a Process

Make a note of the PID ID number shown in the activity monitor.

Open Terminal: Finder > Applications > Utilities

In Terminal, type or paste one of the following…

kill 0000

[replace 0000 with the PID number of the process you wish to terminate]

(return)

_{Originally posted 31 January, 2025. Updated 16, August 2026.}

_{Read on Medium}

Apple macOS Terminal system management How To...