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How To See What Apps Are Open On Macbook

When you look at your desktop, or inside any folder for that matter, on your Mac you’ll see a number (one that will vary depending on how well-organized you are) of file and folder icons. What all of us have in common, however, is a huge range of system files that are hidden just out of view.

Easy way to show hidden files

Try Setapp to make all your files visible on a Mac. With the tools we offer, nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

1. Apple Preview is good for viewing photos, but there are better options. Here our the top 5 Image Viewer apps for Mac which could serve as Preview alternatives.
2. If you try to open an unknown app, you’ll see this warning: Good luck opening that app. Photo: Cult of Mac. I’d like to note that this app comes from a developer I trust. It’s just that he.

Those of us who have lived online for long enough will remember the Delete System32 hoax, with which trolls encouraged naive PC users to delete their Windows 2000 system directory. It’s not a shock that, since those days, developers have taken more care to hide away files that are essential to their operating systems.

There are, however, times when you need to access those files. Most of them are hidden away in the ~/Library folder, but the truth is that the average Mac holds a treasure trove of files and folders that you either no longer need or may want to access for troubleshooting purposes.

Is it normal that 'System' takes up 90GB+ of storage? What does it contain? How to get your System folder under control?

Three Ways to See Hidden Files on Mac

There’s good news for anyone out there who’s looking to access hidden files on their Mac: you can do exactly that, in a number of different ways, by arming yourself with a little bit of knowledge. There are a couple of Finder augmentation and replacement apps, for example, that make the process as easy as clicking a single button.

Before kicking off, however, it’s important to highlight that you should play it safe when digging through hidden files on your laptop or desktop. Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for you can do some serious damage to your operating system, so you’ll want to proceed with caution. After all, these files are hidden for a reason!

How to Tell What Programs Are Open on a MacBook. It is easy to forget how many programs you have open on your MacBook when you are hard at work, but the computer can show you a list of open applications that indicates how its resources are allocated.

See hidden files on Mac via Finder

As mentioned above, it doesn’t take much to make the hidden files on your Mac visible. In fact, you can check out all of the hidden files on your Mac by following just three easy steps:

1. In Finder, open up your Macintosh HD folder
2. Press Command+Shift+Dot
3. Your hidden files will become visible. Repeat step 2 to hide them again!

This process will also work elsewhere, including your Documents or Applications folders. However, if you know what you’re looking for is in your ~/Library folder and would rather jump straight into that then you can take the following steps instead:

1. In Finder, hold down Alt and click Go at the top of your screen
2. Click on Library to open up the, normally hidden, folder

Be prepared for one very cluttered looking Desktop if you decide to uncover all the hidden files there. If you’re anything like the average Mac user, most of what you’ll find will be made up of system files and autosaved Microsoft Word documents!

Some users have reported success finding documents that they thought were lost forever after their Mac crashed without saving, which is always a useful tip to have in the back pocket.

Unhide files on Mac with Terminal commands

Terminal, a Mac command-line interface, is included in macOS by default and allows you to use command prompts to control your Mac instead of following a potentially complex series of instructions to do the same thing in Finder.

If you’re already familiar with using Terminal, then you might prefer to run the following script to reveal your hidden files:

1. Open Terminal
2. Enter the following: defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true [Press Return] killall Finder
3. To hide files again, change the “true” in the step above to “false”

It doesn’t matter too much whether you use Terminal or Finder to make the hidden files on your Mac visible, though you might prefer the latter if you’ve never run scripts on Terminal before, as both routes accomplish the same thing.

One reason you might opt to use Terminal is that it allows you to hide any file or folder on your Mac, which is a great way to avoid that sense of residual curiosity felt by others should they come across a password protected .rar on your desktop! To hide files, just:

1. Open Terminal
2. Enter the following: chflags hidden [Press Space]
3. Drag files or folders to be hidden from Finder into the Terminal window, which will display their paths in Terminal
4. Press Return to hide

To make your files visible again, just repeat the above steps using “chflags nohidden” in place of “chflags hidden.” Of course, the fact that anyone else who knows this trick can also use it to unhide your files means that this isn’t an adequate substitute for other security measures.

Use file managers to access hidden files

How to find the path of a file in Mac? Apps like DCommander and Forklift, both of which perform like native macOS apps and function as extensions of Finder, represent great choices if you’re at all uncomfortable using Terminal or digging around in your ~/Library folder.

Because these apps allow you to make hidden files and folders visible (or invisible) using shortcuts or clicking buttons within the apps, they make the whole process incredibly simple. In Forklift, for example, you can show hidden files by:

1. Clicking View
2. Selecting View Options towards the bottom of the dropdown menu
3. Checking the box next to Show Hidden Files

There’s also a button in the toolbar to show and hide hidden files. DCommander has a similar function available, with a Show System Files command, but you need to add it manually to the app’s toolbar:

As you might guess from those subtle differences in terminology, we would suggest that Forklift is more suitable for someone looking for something that really looks and acts like Finder. DCommander, with a larger range of features and toolbar buttons enabled by default, is still intuitive but feels a little more dense.

Whichever you settle on remember that just because these apps make accessing hidden files easy it doesn’t mean that you can’t do some real damage if you start messing around with the wrong thing!

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Leave hidden files to automatic cleanup

For some Mac users, the question of how to see hidden files is nothing more than succumbing to curiosity. For others, it’s a necessity for troubleshooting a piece of software or device that’s not performing as it should.

Somewhere in between are those in the pursuit of a few spare gigabytes as their hard drive rapidly fills up. If you’re one of those people looking to clean up useless hidden data then an app like CleanMyMac X might be exactly what you need:

1. Open up the app and select Smart Scan
2. Hit Scan
3. Select Review Details underneath Cleanup to see how much System Junk you can safely delete
4. Hit Run to remove those unneeded files

An app like CleanMyMac X will free up space just as effectively, probably more so, than you’ll be able to by randomly deleting hidden files and hoping for the best. If you do end up going this route then don’t consider learning more about hidden content a waste of time — at least you know what to watch out for if someone tries to troll you into deleting vital system files!

Best of all, DCommander, Forklift, and CleanMyMac X apps mentioned above are all available for a free trial through Setapp, a collection of more than 150 macOS apps from top developers all over the world.

Meantime, prepare for all the awesome things you can do with Setapp.

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What are startup items?

Startup items, or login items, are services and applications that launch every time you start your Mac. These are applications that sneak into startup items without notice, never asking if you need or want them there. This way you may end up with a dozen apps launching as soon as you turn on your Mac, weighing heavily on its processor and memory capacities and slowing it down. Such items can increase your Mac’s startup time and decrease its performance.

Plus, sometimes when you remove an application or a service, it leaves a login item with a broken link. These broken login items are completely useless, cause unwanted messages, and waste your Mac's resources (because they look for non-existent applications). Whether you're running macOS Catalina or El Capitan, or earlier — it's all the same, so just read on.

So, let's go over how to take control of login items, and how to get rid of unwanted, broken or hidden startup items.

How to disable startup programs?

Do you want to stop programs from running at startup? There’s an easy way to remove programs from startup and get your Mac to load faster on launch. The fastest way to turn off startup items on Mac is an app like CleanMyMac X.

1. Download CleanMyMac for free.
2. Launch the app.
3. Open Optimization tab.
4. Click on Login items.
5. From the list of apps, disable the ones you don’t need on startup.
6. Done!

How to change startup programs manually?

Disabling Mac startup programs is possible manually. Therefore, if you have some time and would like to do it yourself, follow the steps below.

Your login items are listed in settings. One of the easiest ways to control startup items is inside System Preferences > Users & Groups.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Go to Users & Groups.
3. Choose your nickname on the left.
4. Choose Login items tab.
5. Check startup programs you want to remove.
6. Press the “–” sign below.
7. You’re done.
8. If you need to add an item back, press “+” and choose the app you’d like add.
9. Then restart your Mac to see the changes.

How to fix broken startup items?

Broken Mac startup files are left there because some part of apps are left on your Mac long after you’ve moved the app to the Trash. To get rid of these parts and to fix your startup, you’re going to need CleanMyMac again. First, you need to check if they’re among startup items and disable them if so. You can do it following the instructions above. Then you need to remove app leftovers. CleanMyMac works fine on macOS High Sierra and earlier OS.

1. Launch CleanMyMac.
2. Choose Uninstaller tab.
3. Scroll through the list of apps.
4. If you spot any app that you’ve deleted, check them.
5. Delete the app leftovers you’ve chosen.

You can also find and remove broken login items with the help of System Junk module:

1. Choose System Junk tab.
2. Click Scan.
3. Review details and click Clean.

Finally, you need to clean your macOS startup items through launch services:

1. Open Maintenance tab.
2. Choose Rebuild Launch Services.
3. Hit Run.
4. Done.

Once you do it, all broken app data on your Mac will be fixed.

Remove daemons and agents from startup process

Close Open Apps On Mac

If speaking of files, first go to the system folder /Library/StartUpItems. Here you’ll find all the startup files that are being launched with the system. You can delete the login item you think is necessary if you’re totally sure what you are doing.

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Also, the /Library/LaunchDaemons folder contains a bunch of preference files that define how the application that is being launched along with the system should work. You might want to delete some of these files as well if you know you don’t need them and removing them is safe.

The /Library/LaunchAgents contains preference files responsible for the apps that launch during the login process (not the startup).

The above-mentioned folders contain app-related files. However, you can also check system folders to review whether you need some of the system applications to be running on startup:

1. /System/Library/LaunchDaemons - note that besides preference files this folder contains other important system items that are recommended to keep untouched.
2. /System/Library/LaunchAgents - most probably, you won’t also find anything worth removing in this folder, however, keeping this location in mind might help you find files related to a problematic app that causes troubles on Mac startup. If you have a problematic application that messes about on login, you can try to trace it back from this folder.

But, if you’re looking for simple ways to remove login items, we suggest using a professional Mac utility. Download CleanMyMac X for free and make unwanted and broken login items a thing of the past.

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