Open Task Manager in Windows 10

Windows 10 has Task Manager—a feature you can get access to directly from your taskbar—to help manage your processes and process details, performance statistics, users, app history, and services.

There have been some changes made to Task Manager since Windows 10 first came out—starting from Windows 10 build 16215 the UWP use per-application instanced Runtime Broker processes instead of all sharing a session-wide Runtime Broker. The idea behind it being to help improve resource attribution, resource management, and fault tolerance.

The next update to Task Manager came about in Windows 10 build 16226—then Task Manager had included a GPU tracker to track your GPU performance. Due to the complexities of attempting to pull off such a feat, Microsoft wasn’t shy about suggesting that it might take a while to riddle out all of the bugs associated with trying to track your graphic processor. But for those interested, the GPU tracker does attempt to track GPU utilization information for each GPU component (shown in the Performance tab) and GPU utilization info for each process (shown in the Details tab).

Microsoft later updated the GPU performance tracker in Windows 10 build 16232—the UI changed to give a better user experience, plus some extra details were added such as the DirectX version and the physical location of the GPU. In addition, only the GPU hardware is on display from Task Manager; any other software GPU-related information is hidden.

Design changes were seen again, this time in Windows 10 build 16241—now each GPU’s name is shown in the left side of the Performance tab, the multi-engine view is the default view, there’s a total GPU memory text counter next to the shared and dedicated text counters at the bottom of the Performance tab, and the Direct X version shows the highest supported DX feature level. You can read more about it from the GPUs in the task manager blog.

As of Windows 10 build 17704, there are now two new columns in the Processes tab. With these tabs you can see the energy impact of the processes. The idea behind it being so you can see the power hungry apps and do something about them.

Accessing Task Manager

There are many ways you can get access to the Task Manager in Windows 10. It doesn’t matter what method you choose to get there, the Task Manager will be exactly the same and offer the same features. Having multiple ways to get in to Task Manager is helpful if software glitches are preventing you from getting in one way or you have developed your personal favorite method for what works best in your head. Much to some people’s disgust, Windows has always offered people numerous ways to do something, and rather than considering it confusing, you can start to take advantage of the update that is proposes: getting places quicker, having backup plans to open areas, so forth.

The following tutorial demonstrates all the different ways you can open the Task manager window when you’re using a version of the Windows 10 operating system.

Method One: How to Open Task Manager from Power User Menu

Here is how you can open the Task Manager from the Power User menu:

1. Press the Windows logo + X keys on the keyboard and then click on the Task Manager link.

Method Two: How to Open Task Manager with Ctrl + Alt + Del Keys

Here is how you can open the Task Manager by using the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys:

1. Press the Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys on the keyboard and then click on the Task Manager link. (click to enlarge screenshot below)

Method Three: How to Open Task Manager from Search

Here is how you can open the Task Manager from the search field in the taskbar, that was once known as “Cortana search”:

1. Type task mgr into the taskbar search field and then click on either of the two available Task Manager application entries. (click to enlarge screenshot below)

Opening Up Task Manager To Show More Details

1. If you’re opening the Task Manage for the first time, you’ll need to click on the More details arrow to expand it.

Processes Tab

The Processes tab is the first tab you see open after expanding it from its “less detailed” state. Here is where you’ll find your processes aka the chance to see each individual process and how much CPU, Memory, Disk, and network that are contributing to being taken up.

The Processes tab shows two components on the UI: the running processes on the left and the heat map on the right. The heat map helps you easily see which processes are using up more of the computers resources without you having to look at the statistics. The darker yellow the heat map shows, the more CPU, Memory, Disk or Network usage it is taking up. The heat map goes all the way up to red for when processes officially need some cooling down, which you can do by ending them.

Performance Tab

Double tap/click on the Performance tab to take your screen to a summary view or leave it the way it is and see the CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network usage on graph form.

You can click on each of the details in the left side and get the larger graph view appearing in the right side. The Performance tab impressively gives you live updates on how your computer hardware is being utilized.

App History Tab

The App History tab shows resource utilization metrics for your applications. The default views is to show you only metrics relating to applications from the Microsoft Store.

You can click on “Options” from the menu bar and tap/click on “Show history” for all processes to see resource utilization for all apps when you’re viewing the App history tab.

Startup Tab

The Startup tab shows you the processes that are set to run during startup as well as gives you the chance to alter the startup processes.

You can remove programs so they aren’t running at startup anymore. This tab should be checked every once in a while for new programs that might have automatically added themselves to your list of startup processes.

Users Tab

The Users tab shows the user accounts that are using the computer.

Here you can find the username and the account’s email address.

Details Tab

The Details tab shows you more information on the processes that are running on the computer.

Services Tab

The Services tab is where you can go to manage the services that are running on your computer.

That’s all.