Activity Monitor shows the processes that are running on your Mac, so you can manage them and see how they affect your Mac's activity and performance. This article describes some of the commonly used features of Activity Monitor, a kind of task manager that allows you see how apps and other processes are affecting your CPU, memory, energy, disk, and network usage. So let’s start! Activity Monitor — The Task Manager for Mac. If you’re familiar with the Windows Task Manager, then you may wonder whether there is a twin for Mac. Don’t worry, a Task Manager exists on Macs but it has another name — Activity Monitor.

If you’ve recently converted over to a Mac or are being forced to use one against your will, you probably are used to the user-friendly environment of Windows and want to know the Mac equivalent of your favorite Windows program or feature, right? Well, luckily, recent Macs running the latest versions of OS X are not wildly different than the current versions of Windows. The biggest difference in my opinion is the lack of any kind of Start button on OS X. That’s pretty much what Microsoft did with Windows 8 and probably why everybody hated it. Mac os sierra for older macs.

There simply is no Mac equivalent of the Windows Start button or Start Menu in OS X. The only thing you can do is get a list of all your applications in the OS X Dock, which is like the Windows taskbar. In this article, I’ll go through all the Mac equivalents of Windows programs and hopefully you’ll find using a Mac just as easy as a Windows machine.

Windows Taskbar – OS X Dock Even though you’ll miss the Start button, OS X at least has the equivalent of the taskbar called the Dock. It shows you currently open programs and you can add or remove icons for any other applications installed on your Mac. The recycle bin is also located on the Dock and in order to eject any device connected to your Mac, you drag and drop it into the trash. You can also go to System Preferences and adjust the settings for the Dock: allow it to remain visible at all times, increase the size, change the position on the screen, etc. To get all the applications as an icon on your Dock, open Finder and drag Applications from the sidebar and drop it onto the Dock.

Windows Explorer – Mac Finder Next up is Windows Explorer. The Mac equivalent is the Finder. Windows Explorer is pretty good, but I actually like the Mac Finder more. For one thing, it allows you to have multiple tabs open in the same Finder window, making it easy to drag and drop files to a different location without having to open multiple Finder windows. Secondly, it shows you more useful stuff in the sidebar than Windows like shared servers, other computers, connected devices, etc. You can also click on Finder and then Preferences and configure what items show on the sidebar, which you can’t do in Windows either. Windows Control Panel – Mac System Preferences The Control Panel is the place to go in Windows to control how Windows operates.

You can manage pretty much everything from here including backups, encryption, default programs, audio, fonts, Java, Flash, languages, mouse and keyboard settings, user accounts, firewall settings, and lots more. Though not exactly the same, you can manage all the settings for your Mac from System Preferences. Windows Notepad – OS X Text Edit If you use Notepad in Windows, then you’ll be happy to know there is an equivalent in Mac known as TextEdit. It ships with all Macs and it’s a basic text editor that lets you work with plain text too.