Activity Monitor: Process Name Appears Twice, or With Wrong PID

Under certain circumstances, Activity Monitor may show an application's name twice, and/or with the wrong process identification number ("PID"). The correct PID appears in Terminal.

This issue does not affect system performance or behavior. If you notice this while troubleshooting a different issue, it shouldn't cause any additional concern.

The PID that appears in Terminal is correct.

If you don't know how to view process information in Terminal, you may do so using the "ps" or "top" commands. For example:

  1. Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities).
  2. At the prompt, type: ps -aux
  3. Press Return.


To learn more about ps or top, type "man ps" or "man top" in Terminal.

Published Date: Feb 17, 2012