Safe to Quit
Free lookup

What is this process on my Mac?

Type the name you see in Activity Monitor. Get what it is and whether it is safe to quit, in plain English.

TryWindowServermds_storeskernel_taskaccountsdrapportdmediaanalysisdtrustdclouddphotoanalysisdreplayd

How to find the name

  1. Open Activity Monitor

    Press ⌘ Space, type Activity Monitor and press Return. It is in Applications, Utilities.

  2. Sort by what is busy

    Click the CPU tab, then the %CPU column header so the busiest item is on top. Use the Memory tab and the Memory column the same way if the Mac feels full rather than hot.

  3. Copy the name from Process Name

    Type it into the box at the top of this page. Spelling does not have to be exact, and the part in brackets is optional.

What the four answers mean

Leave itA core part of macOS. Quitting it does nothing useful, and macOS starts it again.
Let it finishIt is doing a job and stops on its own. Quitting it only makes it start over.
Safe to quitA normal app. Quit it the normal way when you are done with it.
Check firstSafe to quit once nothing is in progress: no upload, download, export or call.

Questions people ask

How do I find out what a process on my Mac is?

Type its name from Activity Monitor into the box above. You get what it does in one sentence and a clear answer on whether it is safe to quit. Most names ending in d are background helpers that are part of macOS, and the honest answer for nearly all of them is to leave them alone.

Is it safe to end a process in Activity Monitor?

It depends on what it is. Apps you opened yourself are safe to quit the normal way once nothing is in progress. Parts of macOS are not worth quitting: macOS starts them again within seconds, and quitting one can interrupt a sync, a backup or a sign-in. Look the name up first, and use Force Quit only when an app is frozen.

Why is a process I do not recognise using so much CPU?

Usually because macOS is doing housekeeping: indexing files after an update, syncing iCloud, analysing photos or checking a download. These jobs are loud for a while and then stop on their own. The lookup tells you which job a name belongs to and how long it usually takes. If it never settles, the full page for that process lists the fixes in order.

Where do the answers come from?

From the same knowledge base the Safe to Quit app uses on your Mac: 373 processes, each with a one-sentence plain-English explanation and a verdict. The long explainers on this site go deeper for the most searched names.

Processes with a full explainer

The long pages: why it is busy, what normal looks like and the safe fix order. See the full A to Z.