open apps?

How do I know how many apps and what apps are running on the computer? I have opened Activity Monitor and there are many items listed but they don't seem to be using much memory or CPU. As far as Activity Monitor is concerned I may as well be reading Russian. What's the best way to have open only what I really need? I use the computer for email, web searches and storing photos. On my 500gb drive I am only using 45gb and I have had the thing for over 3 years. Keep getting the spinning beach ball. Did read an excellent article here but need to start slowly as much of this is over my head.

Click the Apple in the menu and select force quit. You can see there which apps, rather than processes, are running.

Did that and I see there are no apps running. Now I have to go into more depth to get rid of the beach ball. Thanks for the quick response.

No problem. Check out the signatures of some of the moderators. Some have a link to deal with the beach ball.

ortho1121 said:

Did that and I see there are no apps running. Now I have to go into more depth to get rid of the beach ball. Thanks for the quick response.

Click to expand...

One great way to start with is reboot the computer.

- Nick

Good timing, Nick. Now the link is in the thread.

Thanks Kevin. That link is on the old side...but most of the info still applies.

- Nick

Can you tell us about the mac you are using while experiencing the spinning beach balls? Click on the Apple icon in the upper left corner and select About this Mac, and a window should open and it should have some of your machines specs.

What model? Laptop or Desktop
What OS X version? 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, 10.12
How much memory?
Processor type and speed?

pigoo3 said:

One great way to start with is reboot the computer.

- Nick

Click to expand...

And sometimes even a full shutdown, wait 30± seconds and then boot up can clear up even more things.





- Patrick
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And sometimes the beachball is an indicator that the hard drive is failing. Hard drives start to fail when then age, with 50% failing by 4 years, according to several industry report.

Failing hard drive is my biggest worry. Planning on getting an updated model soon anyway.

My machine is a late 2012 MAC mini with 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory. Running a 2.5 GHz Core i5 processor. Have 550 GB hard drive but only using less than 50 GB.

backups backups backups.

There are three ways to recover from failed hard drive.