This is how you recognize native and Intel applications

You did and bought a new Mac with an M1 chip, Apple’s new processor. The good thing: your “old” Intel Mac apps will obviously continue to work. Only a few users will likely really notice the difference, but with Apple’s Rosetta 2 rollout Intel over ARM, you can lose some app performance, at least when the app starts. Beautiful: it is transparent to the user. Any app works immediately and does not indicate that it is an Intel app. But how can a user actually know if it’s a native ARM app or one that hasn’t been adapted?

I would therefore like to cite two examples here. The first way is via the activity monitor. You can quickly call it up via Spotlight. After startup you will see several tabs and you can add another one by right clicking on the tabs.

Here, the “Architecture” area is activated. This ensures that you can see during ongoing activities which architecture is active for the respective activity – Apple or Intel – see the screenshot above this paragraph.

The second way is through hard drive information. Click the apple in the top left of the menu bar and select “About This Mac”. Then click on the “Hard Disks” tab and then click “Manage”. In the following figure you can see a list that also contains the item “Programs”.

Here you can see all installed programs: in the “Art” tab you can see if the respective program is a universal native app or an Intel app implemented via Rosetta 2.

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