Task Manager

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What Does Task Manager Mean?

A task manager is a utility that provides a view of active processes or tasks, as well as related information, and may also allow users to enter commands that will manipulate those tasks in various ways. Individual task managers accomplish different functions depending on the operating system and software requirements.

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Techopedia Explains Task Manager

One of the most common examples of a task manager is the task manager utility in Microsoft Windows. Because the Windows operating system dominates much of the personal computer market, many users are most familiar with the task manager in this environment. Here, the task manager can be pulled from a menu command or brought up using Control-Alt-Delete. The task manager shows the user all of the active processes and allows users to terminate those that are causing problems.

Apart from the Windows task manager, other kinds of operating systems have their own task managers. For example, the Gnome System Monitor in Linux is an example of a task manager utility in an open-source platform.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.