{"id":74820,"date":"2021-05-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=74820"},"modified":"2021-05-28T18:24:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T23:24:55","slug":"little-known-mac-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/74820-little-known-mac-apps\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Known Mac Apps: 6 Programs You Might Not Realize You Have"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few weeks ago I regaled you with a set of Little Known macOS System Preferences<\/a>. Every Mac also comes with a variety of apps that many people don’t know about, so today I’ll shed some light on six of these little known Mac apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1. Activity Monitor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"macOS<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Some Macs don’t have cooling fans, but for those that do, the users often wonder why the fan is running at full speed! Activity Monitor<\/strong> is a useful utility displaying information about the apps and system processes currently running on your Mac. To launch the app, open your Applications folder, then the Utilities folder, and you’ll find Activity Monitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once launched, you’ll see something similar to the screenshot below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Activity<\/a>
Activity Monitor: A little known Mac app that’s surprisingly useful<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At the top of the Activity Monitor window are five tabs: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, and Network. CPU shows the different processes running, how much CPU they’re each using, the amount of time they’ve been running (hours:minutes:seconds), and the number of threads running. The percentage of GPU (graphic processor unit) capability used by each process is listed, as well as how long the GPU has been used. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this example screenshot, you see obvious apps like Mail and Messages. There are other processes like sysmond (system monitor daemon), bluetoothd (Bluetooth daemon), and so on; these are mostly background processes that run all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Memory Tab<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Memory tab shows how much RAM is being used at any time. One of the more helpful features is found at the bottom of the Memory tab. It’s a chart showing “Memory Pressure” (see screenshot below). What’s that? Well, if your Mac is running slow, it might not have enough RAM installed and is swapping out items in memory to your disk. Here you can see that my MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM is in the “green” on the left. That means it’s not really overusing RAM. If the chart was showing red quite often, it’s an indication you should consider a RAM upgrade<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Memory<\/a>
Memory is not an issue with this 32GB MacBook Pro<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Energy Tab<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Energy tab is helpful for those who want to stretch a MacBook battery charge as long as possible. It shows the energy impact of each app and process, whether or not it can take an “app nap” to conserve energy, if it uses the GPU, and if it is preventing your Mac from sleeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Disk Tab<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Your startup drive is the focus of the Disk tab. This tab shows how often a process or app reads and writes to a disk. An app that is constantly writing to or reading from storage can slow down a Mac. Should this be the case on your Mac, look into an internal disk upgrade from OWC<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macs using an external drive as a boot drive can benefit from using a fast Thunderbolt drive<\/a><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Network Tab<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The last tab we’ll look at is the Network tab. This displays what each process and app is doing in terms of sending and receiving data over a network, measured in both bytes and packets. This information is useful when doing things like video streaming (you might be overtaxing your network) or if you see an unknown process that is sending and receiving a lot of data. That latter situation may indicate malware that is sending data from your Mac to an unknown recipient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Windows in Activity Monitor<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Window menu in Activity Monitor is your gateway to some other useful displays. For example, Window > CPU Usage<\/strong> displays a chart showing just how hard each core in your CPU is working:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"CPU<\/a>
CPU Usage on each of 16 cores in an Intel Core i9 CPU<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There’s also Window > CPU History<\/strong>, which displays the same information in a constantly updating bar chart. It shows how each core has been used over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Window > GPU<\/strong> History displays a similar bar chart for each GPU in your computer. My MacBook uses both an Intel UHD Graphics 630, which is part of the i9 chipset, and an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M. I found it interesting that GPU History showed very little activity on both GPUs until I fired up YouTube in a browser window. Even then, the GPU wasn’t breathing hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information this little known Mac app, visit Apple’s User Guide for Activity Monitor<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Chess<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"macOS<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Enough of the boring charts and graphs \u2013 let’s play a game! Chess<\/strong> has been a Mac staple for many years. It’s a 3D representation of a chessboard, and the app gives you the option of playing a match online using Apple’s Game Center, against the computer, or against yourself. As you’d expect, it is found in the Applications folder along with the other little known Mac apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By default, you’re playing on a wooden chessboard with wooden pieces, but selecting Chess > Preferences<\/strong> gives you choices of having the board and pieces made of other materials \u2013 marble, metal, and grass for the board, and marble, metal, and fur for the pieces!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The<\/a>
The macOS Chess game, with a grass board and furry pieces…<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Don’t want to use your mouse or trackpad to move the pieces? Another preference lets you speak moves \u2013 for example, “Pawn e2 to e4.” If you’re new to chess, you can set the level of difficulty toward “faster” to make a game against the computer much easier to win or set it to “stronger” to make a game harder to win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The board is also movable. Clicking and dragging a corner of the board makes it possible to view it from any side, from above, or at an angle. The Chess user guide on the Apple Support website<\/a> has more details for this app. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. Font Book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"macOS<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Back in the days when font management became a big deal (the 1990s, for example), there were many commercial apps to let Mac owners see what various typefaces looked like. With the advent of OS X and macOS came a lot of free fonts and a tool to manage them with \u2013 Font Book<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Font Book is accessible from the Applications folder. Launching it displays a list of fonts, both those that are already downloaded and installed on your Mac as well as fonts that can be downloaded with a click. In the screenshot below, you’ll notice that some of the fonts are listed in black while others are gray — the gray ones are available but not downloaded, while the black fonts are on your Mac.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click on any font name in Font Book to see what the typeface looks like<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

For me, I’d say there is little or no chance that I’m ever going to use the Arabic fonts (Al Bayan, Al Nile, and Al Tarikh), Asian fonts (Apple Myungjo, Heiti SC Light, etc…), Indian fonts (ITF Devanagari Book), etc… However, Apple apparently thinks that our Macs do have unlimited storage, so they’ve made it impossible to remove fonts in Font Book. You can add them, but there’s no way to delete them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding New Fonts in Font Book<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Font Book is useful for finding new fonts that you might wish to use. For example, I was pleased to find a really cool font called Trattatello that is perfect for anyone who needs an antique-looking typeface. The size slider at the right side of each font display lets you scale the letters up and down, and for many fonts (Helvetica Neue is a perfect example), clicking the disclosure caret (>) on the left of the font name gives you a choice of font weights and styles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helvetica Neue comes in the following weights and styles: <\/p>\n\n\n\n