"Dock" Related Processes

Mac Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"Dock" Related Processes

This section describes 'Dock' related processes. Dock displays an icon bar at the bottom of the desktop to hold frequently used apps and features.

What Are "Dock" Processes? - "Dock" processes are related the Dock app, which is part of the macOS system.

Dock displays an icon bar at the bottom of the desktop. It is used to hold apps and features that you’re likely to use every day, for example, Launchpad and the Trash.

Here is what I did about "Dock" processes.

1. View "Dock" processes with "ps" command.

herong$ ps -A | grep Dock
  648 2:20.36 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/MacOS/Dock
  682 0:17.78 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/XPCServices
     /com.apple.dock.extra.xpc/Contents/MacOS/com.apple.dock.extra
 6723 0:13.36 /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources
     /DashboardClient.app/Contents/MacOS/DashboardClient

2. Check CPU and memory usages with the "top" command. The "Dock" process uses 25 MB. Why it consumes so much memory to hold some app icons?

herong$ top -pid 648

PID  COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH  #WQ  #POR MEM  PURG  CMPR PGRP PPID
648  Dock         0.0  02:21.18 3    1    398  25M  304K  52M  648  1