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In Windows I have Sysinternals Process Explorer but for Mac the built-in "Activity Monitor" is not enough.

I would need to figure out for each process:

  • Files open
  • CPU usage for each thread (in real time... not just a "sample")
  • Network connections open
  • etc...

I'm a bit new in the Mac OS X world, so any other troubleshooting methodologies are welcome.


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3 Answers

don't really if this would help you, but i've seen tool called: atMonitor which is an "upgraded" version of the Activity Monitor , you can find this at: http://www.atpurpose.com/atMonitor/

hope this helps

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You may be able to use instruments (part of the developer tools) to do this, it can provide alot more granularity than activity monitor however it does require some configuration to get exactly what you want from it, i don't think it will be much good if you are looking at system wide performance but for performance of particular processes it may be useful.

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Are you looking for an all in one application or where you access the information?

It is possible to look at the specific sections using the CLI tools as well for more in depth information:


  1. Open Files: lsof -c "APP_NAME", lsof +d 'DIRECTORY' or for real time file system usage: sudo fs_usage "APP_NAME"
  2. Network Connections: lsof -i | grep "APP_NAME"

As always for more options check out the man page fpr each utility.

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