BEACH BALL OF DOOM

I’M GETTING THE DREADED SPINNING BEACH BALL WITH INCREASING REGULARITY AND MY MAC IS SLUGGISH. WHAT CAN I DO? Quite often, your Mac’s cursor may turn into a spinning beach ball while your Mac has a think. Occasionally, it stays that way. Try pressing Cmd-. (period) to cancel whatever process is afoot. If that doesn’t work, launch the Activity Monitor app. This shows real-time stats on the amount of CPU and memory resources each app is using. Here’s how to use it to get to the root of the problem.

CLOSE OFFENDING APPS If an app’s using lots of memory, close it by highlighting it in the list and clicking the “X” icon in the toolbar at the top of the window.

CHECK THE PRESSURE If the Memory pressure graph is amber or red, then macOS is having problems managing memory. Green indicates that all is good.

USE THE TABS

To find out if a particular app is hogging power or memory, click on the “Memory” tab at the top of the Activity Monitor interface.

SEE THE HOGGERS

Make sure the arrow next to the Memory column is pointing down to organise the apps and processes by memory usage.