If you’re confident with the inner workings of your OS, you can manually clean up the cache. If you find that a certain app is a real memory hog, you can close it from the Activity Monitor by highlighting it and clicking X in the monitor. The CPU section should be the first place you look to see why your Mac is running at a snail’s pace, as it tells you what is affecting your processor (CPU) and reducing speed.Ĭlick on the Process Name column along the menu bar in the monitor to list the programs according to the percentage of the CPU they are using. The Activity Monitor gives you information about five different areas of system usage: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network. Activity Monitor can be opened from the Utilities folder or the Applications folder. You can find out which processes and apps are causing your Mac to lose speed by using the Activity Monitor to let you know what’s going on. If you’re always at the app store downloading the latest helpful app, then you’ll probably find it easy to pinpoint which apps are draining your Mac! So what’s bogging down your Mac and making it run so slowly? Chances are it’s a power-sucking app or two that’s responsible for at least some of the lack of performance. Mac’s Activity Monitor gives you information about five areas of system usage.