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Reading Foreman's Processes page: sections, helpers and totals

· 6 min read

Foreman’s Processes page is a list of everything running on your Mac, split into three sections: Apps, Background processes and System processes. Each app’s helper processes are added up into the app’s own row, copies of the same background program share one row with a count, and the very top of each column shows the total for the whole Mac. Once you know those four ideas, the page reads quickly.

This post explains each one, then the words that can appear in a row’s status, so you know what a row is telling you before you act on it.

The three sections

Foreman groups the list by type. You can turn this off and back on from View > Group by Type. With it off, everything becomes one long list.

  • Apps are the things you opened and can see: Safari, Slack, Photos, a game.
  • Background processes and System processes hold the rest: programs that run without a window, and the parts that keep macOS itself going.

The split saves you from the main problem with a flat list of hundreds of names, which is that the one you care about is buried among things you did not start. If your question is “which of my apps is slow”, look only at Apps. If your question is “what is that thing using the processor while I am doing nothing”, look at Background and System.

Helpers sit under their app

Modern apps are rarely one process. A browser starts a separate process for each tab or group of tabs, plus helpers for networking and graphics. A chat app, a design tool or a code editor does the same thing in its own way. If a list showed each of these as its own row, one app would take up thirty lines and none of them would tell you how much the app as a whole costs.

Foreman adds each app’s helpers into the app’s own row. The CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, GPU and Power usage you see on an app row include its helpers. The row opens to show them individually, so you can still tell which helper is responsible. That is the quick way to answer “Chrome is slow, but is it one tab or all of them”. If you want the longer version of that question, How to tell if one browser tab is slowing down your Mac goes through it, and What are helper and renderer processes on a Mac explains why the helpers exist.

Merged copies

Some background programs run in several copies at once, and each copy is a real process. The Spotlight file reader is a common example. When macOS is reading many files, several copies run together. Foreman puts the copies of one program into one row and shows how many there are in brackets, for example “Spotlight file reader (4)”. The numbers in the row are the combined figures.

This matters because four copies each using a modest amount add up to something you would otherwise miss. Seeing them as one row with one total shows you the real cost.

Plain-English names

Foreman has plain-English names for about 120 macOS processes, with the real name beside them in grey. The Spotlight indexing process, mds_stores, shows as “Spotlight indexing”, with mds_stores next to it in grey. If a name in the list means nothing to you, look at the grey text: that is what you would search for, and it is also what you would see in Terminal.

For a process Foreman does not have a name for, it shows the real name. A missing plain-English name does not mean the process is suspicious. It only means Foreman does not have a name for it.

Columns and totals

The columns are Name, CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, GPU and Power usage. The header’s menu adds more, including PID and User. Click a column’s header to sort by it, so one click on CPU puts the busiest at the top. Processes owned by root or a system account show no Disk figure, so judge those by CPU, and use the Performance page’s Disk graph for the Mac as a whole.

Above each column is a total for the whole Mac. This is the figure that answers “is the Mac actually busy right now”. Each app’s CPU is shown as a share of the whole Mac, so the rows add up toward the total above them. (The top command in Terminal counts each core as 100%, so its figure for the same app can look several times higher.) Read the total first, then the rows:

  • If the CPU total is low and the Mac still feels slow, the problem is probably not the processor. Look at the Memory total, or at the Disk graph on the Performance page.
  • If the CPU total is high, sort by CPU and see which row accounts for it. If one row has most of it, you have your answer. If it is spread over many rows, no single app is to blame, and ending one will help less than you hope.

When you are looking for a particular process, the search field takes a name or a PID: “Search by name or PID”.

What the status words mean

A row can carry a status next to its name.

  • Not responding. macOS has marked the app as hung: it is not handling events. Often it recovers if you wait a minute, especially if it is saving or loading something large. If it does not, End Task force quits an app that macOS has marked this way at once. What “not responding” means on a Mac and how long to wait covers how long to give it.
  • Suspended. You froze the app with Suspend… and it uses no processor until you choose Resume. The toolbar’s Efficiency Mode button reads Resume while a suspended row is selected.
  • Efficiency Mode. The app is set to run at background priority while it is in the background, in short bursts, about a quarter of the processor it would otherwise take.
  • Efficiency Mode, paused while in use. The same setting, lifted for now because the app is in use, so it runs at full speed until you switch away.
  • Quitting… Foreman has asked the app to quit and is waiting for it to finish.

None of these statuses is an alarm. They tell you what state the app is in, so you do not mistake a suspended app for a broken one.

Acting on a row

Select a row and use the toolbar: End Task, or Efficiency Mode. Right-clicking an app gives more: Switch To, End Task, Force Quit, Restart, Efficiency Mode, Suspend…, Show in Finder, Search Online, Go to Details and Properties. The Process menu has Quit (⌘⌫), Force Quit (⌥⌘⌫), Efficiency Mode (⇧⌘E), Suspend… and Show in Finder.

For anything that is part of macOS, Foreman is more careful. It never offers to end kernel_task or launchd. Before ending something like WindowServer or loginwindow, it warns you what will happen, which in those two cases is that you are logged out. And processes that belong to macOS or to other users need an administrator password, which Foreman asks for first. Why Foreman sometimes asks for your password explains that.

A quick routine

  1. Open Foreman with Control-Shift-Escape (⌃⇧⎋).
  2. Read the totals above CPU and Memory.
  3. Sort by whichever one is high.
  4. Open the top app’s row to see which helper is responsible.
  5. Decide between End Task, Efficiency Mode, or leaving it alone.

Reading the page this way is quick, and often the answer is a single row. Foreman is free for 24 hours from the first launch if you want to try it on your own Mac.