El Capitan--is there a "working in background" indicator

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Level 1

15 points

El Capitan--is there a "working in background" indicator

Have spent too much time waiting for various things to complete (e.g., sync, copy/pasting files, opening large files or apps) with no indication that the Mac was "thinking" or "working". Several times this has ended in frustration because it WASN'T working on the requested action.

Ages ago (anywhere from 1986 to last year) I seem to recall a spinning "working in background" indicator on the menu bar.

Am I dreaming? Did this ever exist? Did I miss something obvious in System Settings?

I'm not talking about a progress bar or the rainbow spinning ball of death, just an indication that the Mac knows you asked it to do something and that its working in it.

Dreaming? Workaround? Alfred workflow? 3rd party app solution+

Thank you!

Message was edited by: MamaO, OS and punct

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), El Capitan

Posted on Feb 8, 2016 4:57 AM

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Answer 1

SeaPapp

Level 7

26,486 points

Feb 8, 2016 5:02 AM in response to MamaO

See if Activity Monitor meets your needs Use Activity Monitor on your Mac - Apple Support

Stalling and lagging isn't normal behavior. Would you consider posting an EtreCheck report and maybe we can offer some suggestions http://etrecheck.com/

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Answer 2

MamaO Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 8, 2016 5:25 AM in response to SeaPapp

I can try to replicate it - it doesn't happen all the time.

However, Activity Monitor hasn't helped much - or I don't know where to look for what I need - as there's always something happening in the background... I just can't tell from A.M. if what's happening is what I've asked the Mac to do.

Example:

a month or so ago, on the phone with a Sr. AppleCare tech, we were dealing with a TimeCapsule issue. I followed the instructions (during a screen share) and clicked what he told me to click and we waited.

And waited.

I asked if there was some way we could tell if the Mac was "thinking" or "working on it" and he said he didn't know of any way. We'd already used Activity Monitor earlier, so I'd assumed that if that would have let us know what was going on, he would have had me reopen it.

Finally we gave up and rebooted and started over—which was a risk since we couldn't tell if the Mac was in the middle of doing something that shouldn't be interrupted (scary when dealing with TimeCapsule stuff).

Regardless, it was a big waste of time sitting there and waiting with no way to tell what was going on (if anything). Adding up all the minutes that this has happened equals hours of down time.

Next time it happens I'll try to pull an EtreCheck report and post it.

Thank you!

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Answer 3

Duane

Level 10

124,267 points

Feb 8, 2016 6:33 AM in response to MamaO

Pre OS X, (before 2001) your requests for action were mostly blocking. So you couldn't do much of anything until the request you had made was completed. This was a real pain if you wanted to work on something else for example while the printer was slowly churning out paper. So then you pretty much had to wait and waste a lot of time.

With the introduction of OS X, things are always happening. If there was an indicator which indicated that something was going on it would be constantly spinning.

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Answer 4

SeaPapp

Level 7

26,486 points

Feb 8, 2016 5:49 PM in response to MamaO

You don't need to wait for the computer to act up to run EtreCheck. The report will give us a snapshot of what is running on your system and hopefully point to an obvious issue.

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Answer 5

MamaO Author

Level 1

15 points

Feb 8, 2016 7:37 PM in response to Duane

Ah!

Thank you, Duane. I must be remembering OS 9 (but then, I also remember Suitcase and being able to set "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" as my system "oops" sound, so there's a lot of remembering rattling around in there).

And I understand the "always happening" thing (probably why I've not found Activity Monitor to be helpful in these instances), I just seem to recall seeing an indicator on the menu bar reflecting that the system was working in the last instruction that you gave it directly.

Again, could be ancient history (or a myth). Either way, I miss it/wish it were there.

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