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You are here: Home / Tips and Tricks / Activity Monitor Columns Are Missing, Fix

Activity Monitor Columns Are Missing, Fix

Last updated on October 14, 2019 By Serhat Kurt 82 Comments

Activity Monitor is one of those essential applications that I use frequently. Activity Monitor has a five-category tabs at the top of the Activity Monitor window: CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk, Network, and Cache. Each of these main categories includes subcategories called columns.

Activity Monitor Columns

Sometime you may realize that some or all of the columns items are disappeared. Does Activity Monitor not show any columns? If you are having this problem, this short article explains how you can bring back the column items in the Activity Monitor app.

Please try each step one at a time until you resolve your issue.

  1. Let us first state the obvious. As you probably know, you can add or remove columns by choosing View > Columns from the menu bar. Are columns selected? If not, select them and this will fix the issue.
  2. Still, columns are missing? We will delete the Activity Monitor app preferences. Here is how:
    1. First, quit the Activity Monitor app if it is running
    2. Go to the Finder of Mac OS
    3. Click the Go menu
    4. Click the Go To Folder menu (shurtcut: Command+Shift+G)Go To Folder
    5. This will open a window. In this window, enter the following command and click Go.
    6. ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ActivityMonitor.plistActivity Monitor Preferences
    7. This will open the Preferences window with com.apple.ActivityMonitor.plist selected. com.apple.ActivityMonitor.plist
    8. Delete this file by moving it to the Trash
    9. Now open Activity Monitor and check if columns are there.

See also: Mac Spotlight Search Not Working? 

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks Tagged With: Activity Monitor

Comments

  1. Name Doesn't Matter says

    September 14, 2020 at 1:30 am

    Kudos. First time that first result works perfectly.

    Reply
  2. Lahiru Jayaratne says

    August 24, 2020 at 7:51 am

    Thanks a lot! 🙂

    Reply
  3. Alex says

    August 17, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    Thanks a lot, saved me a headache.

    Reply
  4. Bernard says

    August 13, 2020 at 7:14 am

    working again!!

    Thanx!

    Reply
  5. abouffard says

    August 12, 2020 at 1:56 pm

    Worked for me too (macOS Catalina 10.15.5, 12/8/2020).
    Thanks

    Reply
  6. Гантөмөр Батхүү says

    August 11, 2020 at 10:49 pm

    Thank you so much. It’s working now!

    Reply
  7. BGFallbrook says

    August 10, 2020 at 5:37 pm

    Bingo – thanks!

    Reply
  8. Joyce says

    August 8, 2020 at 12:22 am

    Thanks. Worked perfectly!

    Reply
  9. Jay says

    July 31, 2020 at 12:59 am

    Thanks a bunch! Deleting the file Helped me solve this

    Reply
  10. Karl says

    July 30, 2020 at 12:57 pm

    Thanks very much – same as the other posts, this fix works.

    Reply
  11. Yaroslav says

    July 25, 2020 at 2:07 pm

    Worked for me as well!

    Reply
  12. Schwarz says

    July 24, 2020 at 11:36 am

    Second way did it for me, brilliant!

    Reply
  13. Jill says

    July 23, 2020 at 2:19 pm

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! This has been bugging me for months! 😉

    Reply
  14. Fernando J Arias says

    July 18, 2020 at 3:16 pm

    Thank you so much. Five star!

    Reply
  15. domhnall says

    July 14, 2020 at 9:38 am

    Thanks, deleting the file returned the columns.
    Great share

    Reply
  16. Christina says

    July 8, 2020 at 4:36 pm

    Thank you! This fixed that annoying problem and even I could easily follow the instructions!

    Reply
  17. Mariano Garcia says

    July 7, 2020 at 4:59 pm

    Amazing, dealing with this all morning and now thanks to your info it is working !!! thank you very much!!! U R The man!

    Reply
  18. guide says

    June 23, 2020 at 11:11 am

    thanx it worked for me too. 2020/06

    Reply
  19. Mitch says

    June 15, 2020 at 12:30 pm

    Thanks so much. Seems like it got messed up after OS update.

    Reply
  20. Josh says

    June 13, 2020 at 12:42 pm

    Thanks! Preference file delete worked for me (13Jun2020)!

    Reply
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