Dock Tip: Add Activity Monitor to the Dock

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I found this great tip I copied from 30 Must-Have Tweaks For Your Mac - Smashing Magazine.
This helps me keep an eye on CPU or Memory usage on my dock when running apps...

"Activity monitor is the equivalent of the task manager in Windows. Certain items, when added to the Dock, take on a few extra behaviors. In the case of the activity monitor, those items can display helpful information instead of their icons while sitting in the dock: such as a pie chart showing how much memory is being used, a live graph of processor activity and more. While you can always pop up a window and hit Command + Option + Esc (your new Ctrl + Alt + Delete) to force quit an application, you don’t get any information about programs that are running. Clicking on the activity monitor gives you the force quit option and a wealth of information about your processes."

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Another hidden gem! How does Apple expect users to find these things??
 
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Another alternative is to download Menu meters. :)
This little app will give you all that information and more in your menu bar. :D

See the attached screenie for more.

Picture 1.jpg
 
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Great tip, with a few more goodies on the URL.

Thanks for posting! :)
 
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Another hidden gem! How does Apple expect users to find these things??

Apple probably doesn't, as computers have to be everything for everybody so all the Tricks etc would take pages and not interest all. I have started my own list of ones i come across, you can look here, and feel free to copy anything that u have not seen before.
 
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I've been doing that for years. As an extension, I have the floating CPU bars displayed to the right of the dock on my screen so I can see my CPU usage as well...
 

bobtomay

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I've been doing that for years. As an extension, I have the floating CPU bars displayed to the right of the dock on my screen so I can see my CPU usage as well...

Me too. but, I don't have a right of the dock... too much stuff on it.
 
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Me too. but, I don't have a right of the dock... too much stuff on it.

I keep my dock shrunk down pretty small and keep my apps organized via customized shortcut folders/stacks. By default no specific App icons sit in my dock when closed with the exception of System Prefs and Activity Monitor. Otherwise mine wouldn't fit on the screen.
 

cwa107


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I find iStat menus is more useful for this sort of thing. Activity Monitor is great for killing processes, but I'd rather not having it taking up space in the Dock.
 

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