Just like humans, there are two kinds of active processes in the computer: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious ones would be the apps that we launch to do specific tasks, such as browsers to open websites or email clients to manage our emails. Meanwhile, the subconscious ones are the tasks that run in the background. We don’t start them intentionally, we might not even know they exist, but they are the necessary evil to keeping the machine running correctly.

The problem is sometimes this subconscious process can slow down your machine, especially for the older ones with less system resources. And it can be really annoying if your system crawls to a halt, even though you just open one or two apps just when you urgently need to finish some work.