Viewing startup and background processes on a Mac.

[Smithdogg1]

I am a mainly a PC person and don?t know too much about Mac OSX, but is there any way you can view programs that run at startup, like on a PC you can use MSconfig, and is there any way you can view what is running in the background? Or do you need third party software to do this? Thanks.

[Southern Patriot]

For viewing running processes, use Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder under Applications. For configuring what programs run at login, look at the Login Items tab in Account Preferences.

[Marku$]

darn... beat me to it.

for a more extensive background process list, under Applications>Utilites> Open up terminal and type 'top' (without the quotes) and this is like ctrl-alt-delte to view the processes.

[Southern Patriot]

darn... beat me to it.

for a more extensive background process list, under Applications>Utilites> Open up terminal and type 'top' (without the quotes) and this is like ctrl-alt-delte to view the processes.

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What would top show that Activity Monitor doesn't? You can show all processes in Activity Monitor, or you can show only ones in certain categories. It seems far easier to comprehend for someone who isn't all that familiar with UNIX.

[PureEdit]

What would top show that Activity Monitor doesn't?  You can show all processes in Activity Monitor, or you can show only ones in certain categories.  It seems far easier to comprehend for someone who isn't all that familiar with UNIX.

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Yep, top and Activity Monitor show the exact same things.

[PureLogic]

Yeah. I always have Activity Monitor running in the dock, set the icon to CPU Usage. Great tool!