Glossary
Process vs app
An app is what you open. A process is a running program. One app often runs many processes.
What it is
Modern apps split their work across processes. A browser runs separate processes for tabs, the GPU and extensions; an Electron app runs helper processes for rendering and plugins. Each appears as its own row in Activity Monitor.
That's why Activity Monitor can show forty “Google Chrome Helper (Renderer)” rows and no total for Chrome.
Why it matters
You quit apps, not processes. To decide what to close you need each app's total, which means adding up all of its processes correctly.
In Activity Monitor
One row per process. The hierarchical view groups by parent process.
In iKnowMyMac
Every process is grouped under its app. On our test Mac, about 1,100 processes become about 50 app rows, and every Chrome and Electron helper sits under its app.
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