Mac Utility: Console

The Mac Console is a useful troubleshooting tool in this article we'll review the basics.

First, Console is separate and entirely different than terminal and they should not be confused. Here's a quick visual review:

Terminal:

Console:

Here we'll review the different areas of console and what they are useful for:

Crash Reports: System and user reports about apps or processes that crash. This can be useful to see if an app or process is crashing often. Sometimes it may be the cause of other issues, if one application is crashing often, try uninstalling it and see if it resolves other issues.

Spin Reports: System and user reports with details about app or process issues. This is where you'll also find a list of applications that get "stuck" and you see spinning beachballs. Again if you see one particular application listed here often then that might be the root cause of other apps or the entire system being stuck. Try uninstalling that particular app and if it resolves the issue.

Log Reports: System and user reports with information about events that occur when the system or specific apps are processing. Most of the information here is beyond the scope of this article however it's helpful to know where it is in case Apple or your IT support need information.

Diagnostic Reports: System and user reports with information about hardware resources, system response times, and more. Most of the information here is beyond the scope of this article however it's helpful to know where it is in case Apple or your IT support need information.

You'll also see Diagnostics Reports, Mac Analytics Data and system.log, each of these also contains further diagnostic logs that may be requested by different technical support teams.