Here is the LaunchDaemon plist that I have been using to collect this information in the background on my test machines.Ĭom.Ĭom. This will give you relative performance statistics to help determine the qualitative “feel” and “slowness” an application may be causing.

Compare native processes like WindowServer, Safari, and Mail to the target application.

A simple example would be: “reboot, immediately run target application, perform X task in target application, stop log collection”

Create a repeatable testing plan so you can change variables and maintain data integrity.

Use some analysis tool like Splunk, Kibana, or event Excel instead of trying to read the logs manually.

Testing conducted by Apple in November and December 2022 using preproduction 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M2 Max, 12-core CPU, 38-core GPU, 96GB of RAM, and 8TB SSD. You can open it to identify the cause of high Mac CPU usage. This default Apple utility allows you to see the CPU usage, GPU usage, memory usage, energy usage, disk usage, network usage, and other useful information of a Mac. If the application you are testing uses a kernel extension be sure to chart kernel_task with that KEXT loaded and without that KEXT loaded. Performance tests are conducted using specific computer systems and reflect the approximate performance of MacBook Pro. You can easily check your Mac CPU usage and performance through the Activity Monitor.

While we have since moved to more advanced ways to collect energy impact and performance telemetry for cmdReporter’s internal testing, I have run the above command as a LaunchDaemon on my own machine for months at a time without noticing any additional overhead.

Mac cpu usage monitor