How to Check Your Data Usage on An Apple Mac Computer

These days, most of us are using far more data than we did before on a regular basis. Whether you’re teleworking, taking classes, or at home in quarantine in any other position, for many people the Internet has become a window to the outside world. Every find a great series on Youtube, or Netflix and before you know it, you’ve streamed HOURS of content before even realizing it? How you can monitor data usage on your iMac?

For those with unlimited home WiFi, this might not be such a big deal, but if you’re sharing with others, taking up all the bandwith can turn into a big issue. Now, more than ever, we’re relying on the Internet for staying connected. And by monitoring our usage in advance, we can avoid paying overuse fees or bumping into dropped speeds. Today we’re going to look specifically how you can monitor data usage on your iMac.

Find Your Activity Monitor

So on Macs, there is a super handy tool called Activity Monitor. This can help you assess your data usage, memory usage, and the energy being consumed by your computer. We could get into the details for these other functions, but today we want to simply focus on the data. So here we go!

Once you get into the Activity Monitor, you will see 5 tabs available for selection. Make sure you are on Network, and from there, your data usage will be nicely divided for you by program and category. We’ve taken a screenshot from one of our computers here, though the display has been edited for privacy. (Sorry guys, no peeking at our username!)

The great thing, is that the Actitivity Monitor really breaks things down by category and program. you can see both your upload and download, with data received and data sent, and perhaps the most useful function is being able to break things down by program.

Why? Because one the biggest culprits of data consumption are the invisible programs that run in the background. You might not even realize that something is using up data, by receiving messages or doing invisible updates. By checking here, you’ll be able to better monitor your dat usage, and it also gives a better idea of some of the invisible things going on with your computer that you don’t necessarily want updating or running without your consent. It’s always better to know.

So what do you guys think? It’s pretty simple, right? Let us know the programs you find yourself using the most data with and how you’ve managed to cut back.

Stay tuned for later articles, we’ll provide additional tips on saving data and how-tos for seeing your data usage on other devices.

Need Additional Data?

Finally, for those in Japan who are finding their highspeed data to be constantly maxed out, we’d like to introduce our parent company, CDJapan Rental, which provides high quality unlimited data pocket wifi rentals. We’ve recently started providing support for telework, so make sure to see our pages for incredible low rates. Check it out here for CDJapan Rental plans.

Also, convenience of buying a prepaid SIM card when traveling to Japan. When traveling to Japan, there are many benefits to buying a prepaid SIM card, especially for trips of 30 days or less.

Enjoy Japan Anytime, Anywhere! Japan Prepaid SIM Card

Enjoy Japan Anytime, Anywhere! Japan Prepaid SIM Card