# iMac Activity Monitor - Change View



## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Following a visit to my local Genius Bar this morning, may Activity Monitor is now a small bar graph - see pic below. Unfortunately I can't work out how to get the larger graph view with the list of processes. Grateful any advice.


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## Hal P Anderson (Jan 23, 2018)

Not a Mac person, but on Windows, I would try right-clicking on various parts of that window. Ctrl-click, I think, on a Mac.


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 23, 2018)

Try Cmd-1.


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## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Thanks Hal, I'm sadly not a Mac person either - although I will be if I don't give up - I love the 5k display but that's about all at the moment! Sadly no combination of clicks does anything but I've now worked out that when I can see the column display (no titles so I don't know what it is showing) I then have an icon on the dock with I can click on to bring up the full activity monitor. I'm trying to work out what is occasionally bogging down the whole system and making LR impossible to use.


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## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Thanks Jim, I'll remember that for next time. The bar graph display has now gone so I won't try and get it back to test!


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## Conrad Chavez (Jan 23, 2018)

stevevp said:


> The bar graph display has now gone so I won't try and get it back to test!


All Activity Monitor windows are listed on the Window menu with their keyboard shortcuts:

Activity Monitor (the main window)
CPU Usage (the window with the bar graph, showing current CPU loads)
CPU History (another window you probably haven't seen yet)

These are all independently available; you can show or hide any combination of those windows at any time.


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## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Thanks Conrad. At the time I wrote the message I had tried the various View options which didn't seem to do anything. The Windows options is what I needed. In the absence of any scale or titles, I guess the CPU Usage monitor is just showing relative %.


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## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Next question please.  When the fan in the iMac is sounding like a steam train, the Activity Monitor is showing the %cCPU at 660! How is such a high % possible?


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 23, 2018)

I think it's just Apple's way of doing things.....a four-core system will typically have 8 'virtual' cores listed (via the hyper-threading mechanism), each individual core can run up to 100%. So rather than give the average value, Apple add the totals of each individual core to give you the overall total that you see. On Windows, that "660%" would be shown as 82% or 83% (though it's Task Manager would still show the 8 individual bars). That makes more sense to me, but that's probably only because I'm from a Windows background and I've only been using a Mac for the last few years.

But in terms of overall CPU usage, I can see all 8 cores flat out at 100% during some Lightroom activities. Sounds scary, and you need to make sure the computer's cooling system is working!


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## stevevp (Jan 23, 2018)

Jim Wilde said:


> Sounds scary, and you need to make sure the computer's cooling system is working!



That'll be the steam train! Thanks for your full explanation Jim, it makes sense now. I think after 30+ years on PC's it's maybe a bit late to make the change!


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## clee01l (Jan 23, 2018)

stevevp said:


> Following a visit to my local Genius Bar this morning, may Activity Monitor is now a small bar graph - see pic below. Unfortunately I can't work out how to get the larger graph view with the list of processes. Grateful any advice.
> 
> View attachment 10525


I can get this view of the CPU activity in the Dock icon but I don't know how to invoke it in a Window.  For the Dock icon to can change it from the app menu: {View}{Dock Icon}.  I can create multiple windows  in the menu: {Window}


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