[HN Gopher] Stats - macOS system monitor in your menu bar
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       Stats - macOS system monitor in your menu bar
        
       Author : LeoPanthera
       Score  : 91 points
       Date   : 2025-01-30 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | herrkanin wrote:
       | I've been for many years a happily paying customer of iStat Menus
       | [1], from which this seem to be the heavily inspired of.
       | 
       | [1] https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
        
         | aucisson_masque wrote:
         | Been using stats for 4 years now, never had any issue with it.
         | why pay when something free and open source is available.
        
         | blacksmith_tb wrote:
         | I paid for it, and paid for one upgrade, but stats looks like
         | it covers all of what I am interested in.
        
         | imagetic wrote:
         | I've lost count of how many years I've owned a Bjango license.
         | Amazing software.
        
           | bolognafairy wrote:
           | One, two, three...Christ, 16 years here. This made me feel
           | terrible. Thanks!
        
         | varenc wrote:
         | ++ to this rec.
         | 
         | I've tried Stats over the years as the project has evolved and
         | I keep coming back to iStat Menus. Stats feels _very_ inspired
         | by iStats Menus 's design as well. The one thing I appreciate
         | about Stats though is support more SMC sensor values.
        
       | karianna wrote:
       | I'm being lazy (am an iStats user), has anyone here compared the
       | two?
        
         | jamesmackennon wrote:
         | I swapped from stats to iStats a few years ago. I've found
         | stats to be easier to customize and the UI is more uniform.
         | That said, it doesn't have the weather widget, so I've kept
         | iStats around solely for its weather functionality.
        
           | swrobel wrote:
           | I assume you mean you went iStats -> stats
        
           | reaperducer wrote:
           | A weather widget is built-in to macOS now.
           | 
           | System Settings > Control Center > Weather
        
         | maattdd wrote:
         | I switched from iStats to stats like 1 year ago. I found it
         | more responsive (and free). I'm using Vetero for the weather
         | functionality.
        
       | TMWNN wrote:
       | For me Stats replaced MenuMeters, which has not been updated
       | lately.
        
         | ithkuil wrote:
         | Menumeters still works for me on the latest MacOS (actually
         | it's some fork of menumeters)
         | 
         | What does this have that menumeters hasn't?
        
           | tanvach wrote:
           | I've just switched, mainly it works 100% while some menumeter
           | sensors do not show up on the menu bar for me. The drop down
           | menu is also much more informative and modern with charts.
        
       | ge96 wrote:
       | Windows doesn't have a programmable equivalent does it? Last time
       | I messed around with this stuff I got by with an Electron app and
       | using browser desktop notifications but I think I couldn't
       | actually modify the taskbar/put icons somewhere.
        
       | doug_life wrote:
       | Are there any equivalents that work in Windows 11? There were a
       | handful that worked in previous versions of Windows but lots of
       | them won't work in W11 and those that say they do are risky
       | installs.
        
       | grishka wrote:
       | Heh, I installed this and immediately found out that
       | "LegacyScreenSaver" has leaked 40 GB of memory.
        
         | sammcgrail wrote:
         | are you on a work laptop? A lot of times they have screensavers
         | for intel arch, and apple silicon might have something to do
         | with this problem
        
       | ElijahLynn wrote:
       | I brew installed but it didn't come up in my menubar. Just
       | restarted my Mac and now I see it. I'm too lazy to make a PR to
       | update the docs though right now.
       | 
       | Edit: I just see the battery widget not any of the other ones.
       | This is a confusing onboarding experience.
       | 
       | Edit2: ah, they were all hidden because of Macs crap UX on
       | menubar space. No indication there are more menu item. What a
       | poor design decision Mac.
        
         | hombre_fatal wrote:
         | Yeah, it's really bad UX how icons simply don't show up if
         | there's no room on macOS. There should at least be a spillover.
         | 
         | Back in the day I paid for https://www.macbartender.com/ to get
         | these features.
        
           | ElijahLynn wrote:
           | Thanks, I'm totally gonna try that!
        
           | Khaine wrote:
           | You can also use Ice[1], which does the same thing and is
           | open source
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice
        
         | freehorse wrote:
         | Alright, bet. Wanna make your Mac menu bar less clunky? Here's
         | the tea. Pop these commands in your terminal to tighten it up:
         | defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
         | -int 8         defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain
         | NSStatusItemSelectionPadding -int 8
         | 
         | Changed your mind? No cap, just undo it with these:
         | defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
         | defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain
         | NSStatusItemSelectionPadding
         | 
         | Then, log out and back in. Boom, you're golden.
        
           | theoreticalmal wrote:
           | Ick
        
           | bolognafairy wrote:
           | stickin out ya notch for the rizzler
        
       | evanjrowley wrote:
       | I had a neat program like this for Windows in the early 2000s.
       | Got it from a Microsoft engineer who unfortunately I lost contact
       | with. It must have been the lightest-weight resource monitor
       | program to have ever existed for Windows NT, 2000, CE, and XP.
       | Basically it took the Task Manager's resource meters, displayed
       | them transparently, and set them on the upper-right corner of the
       | screen.
        
         | floydnoel wrote:
         | reminds me of power tools
        
       | tcdent wrote:
       | I like that I was able to style these with a super minimal theme
       | in my menu bar that gives me a glance at what my system is up to
       | and if it's outside normal parameters.
       | 
       | Have been using this for about a year now without issue.
        
       | sammcgrail wrote:
       | Can it beat istat?
        
       | hombre_fatal wrote:
       | Cool. I used to pay for iStat Menus, but one day I got a new
       | laptop and couldn't figure out how to download the old version I
       | had bought a license for.
       | 
       | IMO it's essential to see cpu / mem / network consumption at all
       | times and, on top of that, the top 5 apps consuming each one of
       | them. It should be a default feature of computing devices by now,
       | but it's so far from that which only benefits bad actors
       | (resource hogs, bad software). I shouldn't have to launch
       | activity monitor every time I want such basic info.
       | 
       | I'll try this out.
        
       | kennysoona wrote:
       | The lack of a systray on MacOS is one of the reasons I really
       | hate the interface. Stuff like this can partly make up for that.
        
         | kccqzy wrote:
         | How is a menu bar app not a substitute for the systray?
        
       | spiantino wrote:
       | Stats + Hidden Bar + Brave are my first 3 downloads on any new
       | Mac
        
         | mattrighetti wrote:
         | I did not know about Hidden Bar, will try that out! I've been
         | using Bartender for a long time but that is not free.
        
       | brainzap wrote:
       | with macs being so powerful, I am now only monitoring 12 hour
       | energy consumption in Activity Monitor
        
         | larusso wrote:
         | I needed something like stats back when RAM was an issue on my
         | MacBook 2011 (I installed 16Gb even so 8 was the official max
         | from Apple) and the n during the 2020ish years before my first
         | M series to figure out why my fans started to act up. Now I
         | also only need to figure out what eats Batterie.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-30 23:00 UTC)