[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 : 424 points
Date : 2025-01-30 19:37 UTC (1 days 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!
| imagetic wrote:
| I think I paid for it a few times because it had been so
| long. I also got work to buy 12 licenses to monitor edit
| bays when they were overheating all the time. I could read
| the machines stats on an iPad!
|
| Good times.
| 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.
| jshier wrote:
| Latest redesign is pretty garbage though. I want my precise
| graphs back!
| 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
| dylan604 wrote:
| argh!! why oh why does mine not have this??? Sequoia 15.1.1
| selcuka wrote:
| It comes with Sequoia 15.2.
|
| I am still on 15.1.1 too as I have been waiting for a
| 15.2.1 for bug fixes, but they released 15.3 instead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| of course it is.
|
| thanks. now i'm wondering why it hasn't been pestering me
| to upgrade. i just went and looked, and now it sees the
| upgrade possible. i must have told it later and promptly
| forgot about it
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| using an Electron app for this just feels like a 30lb sledge to
| drive in a finishing nail.
| selcuka wrote:
| Electron is overkill, but it can be quite lightweight with
| something like Tauri as it doesn't bundle another browser and
| uses the default web renderer.
| vunderba wrote:
| I don't know about programmable, but hwInfo used to be pretty
| popular on Windows for monitoring temps/hd/CPU/etc.
|
| https://www.hwinfo.com
| ge96 wrote:
| yeah I just meant in general not specific to hw info
| mdaniel wrote:
| Unclear what you mean by programmable, but
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/pro...
| is the bee's knees and you can set an option to have it take
| over taskmon.exe, launch on login, and put as many of the
| widgets in the taskbar as you fancy. I love it
|
| I've heard about running them directly from SMB but have never
| been the kind of person to try out such a stunt
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/#sysinternals...
| ge96 wrote:
| yeah if you can modify the taskbar that's interesting, like
| where the weather/news comes in that area
| mystified5016 wrote:
| I use XMeters. It's okay. You have a little customization to
| which meters to display, but it does pretty much everything I'd
| like it to. Per-core bar graph, memory utilization, and disk
| and network up/down rates.
|
| The config ui is unbelievably slow with a very early windows 7
| aesthetic. But I've seen that screen maybe three times in as
| many years. It's fine, I guess.
|
| The main.taskbar widget seems perfectly cromulent though. No
| noticeable impact on system resources, and the updating feels
| plenty snappy. I'm happy with paying a few bucks for this
| widget.
| 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
| grishka wrote:
| No, it's my personal laptop and the screensaver is definitely
| native (ARM). It's probably just Apple being sloppy again.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| 40 GB is not simple sloppiness when it comes to a simple
| screensaver. I would encourage you to explore other
| solutions than to just blame it on some historical
| precedent you've experienced. However true it may be. It's
| just not likely given the criteria.
| grishka wrote:
| Apparently it _is_ slopiness in the form of an
| undocumented API contract breakage.
|
| https://github.com/lpar/RedPill/issues/8 (the screensaver
| I use)
|
| https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/xscreensaver-6-08-out-
| now/ (linked from there)
|
| Maybe I should submit a PR with this workaround.
| cwizou wrote:
| Yes I can confirm it's _exactly_ that.
|
| Basically Apple made a new "safe" API for screensavers
| (via .appex) but is only using it internally. 3rd party
| screensavers must still use the old unsafe API (that uses
| plugins, so unsafe code).
|
| To bridge that gap, Apple made legacyScreenSaver, an
| .appex that loads the plugin code. It's a great concept
| in practice, but the implementation has been a mess since
| macOS 10.15 (Catalina...), breaking many things (multi
| monitor support was a big one, broken in many different
| ways over the years). Some Apple built in screensavers
| haven't been ported to the new API, so you may still have
| issues with legacyScreenSaver without that.
|
| With macOS 14, Apple broke it again and indeed,
| legacyScreenSaver no longer tells the third party
| screensaver to quit! My rough guess is that this is
| linked to the way they implemented the transition with
| the new built in aerial videos they added that "slows"
| down on your desktop (on practice, it's not the
| screensaver that becomes the desktop, but 2 separate
| process/video players that gets synced up!).
|
| Anyway, it's been a mess for third party developers for a
| while (I make one called Aerial). Our best workaround is
| to listen for a macOS event that tells us the screensaver
| will exit, and time our way to forcing an exit
| (literally, we call exit() which we shouldn't do, but
| that's the only workaround that works-ish). It works
| maybe 99% of the time. But sometimes legacyScreenSaver
| still craps out on its own.
|
| Killing it manually will fix things (you will get a black
| screen + some CPU usage until you do, that can get bad
| depending on the screensaver) too.
|
| I (and others) reported that bug multiple times but it's
| been 1 year+ and nothing. It's a mess.
| efitz wrote:
| Why use power and memory to run a screensaver when you
| can put the display to sleep?
| duggan wrote:
| Screensavers do seem like a relic from the CRT era, but
| there is probably a fraction of a second difference
| between waking a display and simply dismissing a
| screensaver, which I imagine matters to some people.
| throwaway314155 wrote:
| Ah in that case I apologize. Truly baffling situation.
| 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
| jedberg wrote:
| Looks like the features are very similar. Is there anything
| the commercial product does that the open source doesn't?
| Khaine wrote:
| I've used both, and I think Bartender was a little more
| polished, UI wise.
| Khaine wrote:
| This was after I stopped using Bartender, but it got
| silently sold to a third party
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/04/bartender-mac-app-
| new-o...
| imagetic wrote:
| Ice is great. Took some fiddling but I have been stoked on
| it.
| Kovah wrote:
| I would be very careful with using Bartender now. It was a
| great app, but recently bought by a shady company known for
| buying apps to milk them for money and user data. I recommend
| Ice, as linked by Khaine, which is open source, free, and
| works like a charme.
| 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
| lukevp wrote:
| What's the slang about? The OP doesn't seem to be using any
| slang or colloquialisms. I thought it was funny but I don't
| think I fully got the joke.
| benreesman wrote:
| It's pretty close to this meme from like a year ago:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1963h4k/c
| s...
| natebc wrote:
| It's like ZoomerGPT or something. I actually needed a smile
| so i appreciated it.
| freehorse wrote:
| wasn't deep or nun, lowkey just wanted to help, learned
| this terminal thingy here fs
|
| I have a system prompt for haiku to convert messages to
| genz slang. I use it to confuse friends with it sometimes
| and we have a laugh. I had the instructions somewhere
| stored and just wanted to rewrite them before posting them
| here because I am paranoid and did not remember if i posted
| them verbatim in another place with another username.
|
| I know this is not really the place for this sort of thing,
| but if some people smiled a bit I am good with that
| bdcravens wrote:
| Totally off topic, but it's funny how much of "modern"
| slang (whatever the generation) is present in hip hop
| culture years before. I noticed that when "twerk" became
| a thing; I remembered songs about twerking from years
| before that.
|
| In this case, the term "bet": I remembered hearing that
| for the first time in the late 1980s in a song by Fresh
| Prince (Will Smith): "... bet, well let's go then..." (As
| We Go, 1988)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That is because most American slang derives originally
| from black and LGBT culture, specifically African
| American Vernacular English.
| iforgotmysocks wrote:
| This makes me cringe. No one talks like that
| rodgerd wrote:
| No-one you know, old person.
| iforgotmysocks wrote:
| Using genZ/A words for sake of using them makes you
| unhinge and not genuine. And not being your authentic
| self is the least genz thing you can do
|
| Also I am genz and calling someone old is rude
| kcplate wrote:
| Simmer down there sonny boy---we may not speak your lingo
| but at least our generation owns the homes we live in.
| clait wrote:
| What? Go back to Reddit please
| saagarjha wrote:
| That would be exactly the opposite thing to say if you
| want people to simmer down.
| SadTrombone wrote:
| As someone who also owns the home I live in, "we
| destroyed home ownership for future generations" is not
| the win you think it is.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| > but at least our generation owns the homes we live in
|
| what a weird thing to say. cool flex that younger people
| aren't able to buy houses as easily as the older
| generations and that the current housing market is
| f*cked, congrats for profiting from a broken system.
| kcplate wrote:
| Perhaps I should have said:
|
| "Simmer down there sonny boy, we may not speak your lingo
| but at least our generation can recognize obvious
| sarcasm"
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| No one uses footnotes in a webforum other than here either,
| but here we are.
| itsmemattchung wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. Presumably the item spacing with
| too large (by default) and as such, many of the icons would
| not display. This fixed it! Appreciate the suggestion
| compootr wrote:
| weird, they all appeared for me
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Open source and especially free open source apps probably don't
| care too much about the "onboarding experience".
| 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.
| bogantech wrote:
| > IMO it's essential to see cpu / mem / network consumption at
| all times
|
| Why?
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| At minimum, to just develop a sense of how the computer loads
| and de-loads as various services or programs are called
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Not using any menubar stat programs currently, but have
| done so for exactly this reason in the past. Even if
| nothing is misbehaving, they're helpful for keeping a pulse
| on your machine and for getting a feel for which programs
| are heavy on resources for no good reason.
|
| It used to be that noise from hard drive activity and fans
| spinning up were a pretty good proxy for this, like how my
| iMac G5 would do its best impression of a jet engine
| whenever a flash ad banner appeared on screen. These days
| on M-series Macs though a random browser tab can be keeping
| a whole core pegged in the background and the only reason
| I'd notice is if I happened to touch the bottom of the
| laptop and notice it's slightly warm.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I like to know that the programs I'm developing utilize
| resources as I expect or intent them to.
|
| I might be bad at my job but it's not uncommon for me to
| design something and discover it's sucking back resources to
| some crazy degree. I don't want to discover that in flame
| charts way after the fact. I'd rather see it in real time and
| diagnose the issue early on in the process.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Tells me when something is done
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Basic insight into what your device is doing, and which app
| is doing what.
|
| Lets you build intuition about what is normal vs abnormal.
| And it's also essential for letting you perceive which apps
| are bad citizens (and good citizens). Try one of these tools
| out for a month and you catch all sorts of random things.
|
| Funnily enough, the computer's fan used to perform part of
| this role. But that has increasingly gone away as laptops
| become increasingly silent.
|
| Once I randomly opened Activity Monitor on my M1 Macbook only
| to find that vim was using 100% of a CPU core, and the timer
| said it had been in this state for days! It wasn't even in
| the foreground of any terminal tab. Just in a spinloop in the
| background doing who knows what. And it might have stayed
| like this for a year until I'm forced to reset the computer
| for an update.
|
| Another example that you might find more compelling is when
| your computer's network jumps to 5MB/s. It should always be
| explainable.
| 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?
| kennysoona wrote:
| Because programs can not register an icon to minimize the
| apps to the menubar app while providing core functionality
| and info via a context menu and tooltips, at least AFAIK.
| selcuka wrote:
| Spotify can do that, so apparently it's an option even
| though not very common.
| jshier wrote:
| Any app can, provided they build a menu item. Most apps
| don't, and those that do don't usually connect the
| presentation of the menu to an action in the app, it just
| runs alongside the app (e.g. Kaleidoscope). But you could
| do that if you wanted.
| kennysoona wrote:
| Interesting to know, thank you.
| 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.
| ilyagr wrote:
| I haven't heard about Hidden Bar before, but
| https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice is quite nice.
| clait wrote:
| Unfortunate that you mentioned Brave invalidating your previous
| two suggestions!
| apparent wrote:
| Different reaction over here. I've never heard of Stats or
| Hidden Bar, but as a Brave fan I'm going to go check them
| out.
| 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.
| freehorse wrote:
| I need it on apple silicon for the opposite reason, because
| there is basically no feedback from the computer if something
| is eating all then resources. Eg sometimes something eats my
| ram and it starts swapping and I do not even notice.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Exactly my situation too. Both for CPU (the MBA is fanless)
| and memory. You just have no idea otherwise, in many cases.
| acherion wrote:
| Neat little app, but it made bluetoothd go bananas on my CPU,
| chewing up to 40% (M2 MBA here)
| ainiriand wrote:
| That is explained in the FAQ, apparently the bt module is
| inefficient but you can disable it.
| acherion wrote:
| I disabled the module but it still chews up a lot of CPU.
| dmwood wrote:
| I've used XRG (free) from gaucho.software through many changes of
| hardware CPU numbers and macOS versions. Light and fluffy, for me
| at least.
| js2 wrote:
| This looks like a clone of iStat Menus which I had installed for
| years and years till one day I realized I basically never look at
| it and the icons were just taking up space in my menu bar. I
| finally un-installed it.
|
| The activity monitor in my dock set to show CPU is sufficient for
| my needs.
| dylan604 wrote:
| the one I use most often is about://peformance in Firefox
|
| I used to open up Activity Monitor, but every single time my
| laptop fans kick on, it was the browser. with the browser
| performance monitor, i can see exactly which tab is being
| naughty. So now, I skip Activity Monitor and go straight to the
| source. Usually, a cmd-R on the offending tab brings it back
| under control. I assume some JS dev has not tested their code
| by having it running in a tab for an amount of time other than
| how long it takes to test their changes.
| draculero wrote:
| do you mean `about:processes`?
|
| `about://performance` doesn't work at least from my FF, but
| `about:performance` redirects to `about:processes`
| dylan604 wrote:
| yes. about:performance
|
| the // was just muscle memory/brain fart/oops
|
| i never really noticed it redirected to processes.
| brailsafe wrote:
| It's also often just ads, and installing a blocker helps
| dylan604 wrote:
| blockers are fully engaged. it's not definitely not ads.
| msravi wrote:
| I think in the latest nightly, this is about:processes
| JayDustheadz wrote:
| omg thank you so much for this! Totally did not know this
| could be done from within FF!
| stogot wrote:
| Inhad no idea this existed.!
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| It is indeed a clone of iStat Menus. But a very good one, which
| I discovered when I got tired of paying for the yearly upgrade
| to iStat.
| msephton wrote:
| I'm using an old version of iStat Menus, works fine. I did
| try Stat but the text in the menu bar is too thin for my
| eyes, and the developer wasn't receptive to my PR that
| addressed the issue. Which is fine. But makes the app not for
| me.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I was finally persuaded to subscribe to Setapp. I had already
| paid for licenses to most of the software on Setapp, but as I
| have more and more of them roll into a "free" upgrade, I
| definitely think it's worthwhile.
| seemaze wrote:
| TIL you can show useful stats with 'Activity Monitor.app' right
| in the dock by right clicking the icon and selecting from the
| 'Dock Icon' menu item. Thanks!
| jdeibele wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, the option I'd
| want - memory utilization - doesn't seem to be one of the
| choices.
| Dragonai wrote:
| +1, thank you js2!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I found iStatsMenu also destabilized my system. I'd get random
| kernel panics, while it was running.
|
| It may have been just one of the display modules, as I didn't
| use the default set, but I never felt like tracking it down, so
| I uninstalled it.
|
| Every now and then, I try reinstalling it, but it still crashes
| the system. Not a big deal. Just eye candy.
| saagarjha wrote:
| I'm very curious what it is doing to panic your computer
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I was, too, but I knew it would be a huge pain to track
| down (the crashes are very random). This is the kind of
| thing that MacsBug was good for.
|
| For me, it doesn't really have a ton of actual utility.
| It's more of a "toy," so I don't really lose sleep over it.
|
| I'm sure it works fine, for the vast majority of folks, so
| it's obviously not something the authors worry about.
| your_challenger wrote:
| TIL you can set live dock icons. This is all I need too. Thank
| you.
| parl_match wrote:
| iStat menus hit a lot harder when 8GB of RAM was a $2000
| upgrade.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember when 4 _MB_ of RAM was several hundred dollars.
|
| My first computer (a VIC-20) had 3KB of RAM. There was so
| little memory, that I had to write most of my software in
| 6502 Machine Language.
| jkestner wrote:
| That's great. You could map 3KB on, like, a sheet of paper.
|
| I learned Photoshop 2.5 on a 5MB RAM/40MB HDD Mac IIvx
| (512KB video RAM, hell yeah). Seems incredible now, but
| that capability after upgrading from a pre-Windows 286 felt
| incredible then.
|
| Now my Apple Silicon machine bogs down when everything's
| trying to use the same core for UI I guess, and each
| browser tab consumes more resources than Mac OS 7.
| efitz wrote:
| The first computer I programmed on was a Data General
| mainframe with 8k of RAM. But shortly before my first class
| they got CRT terminals so I didn't have to use punch cards,
| and it did support BASIC.
| leidenfrost wrote:
| This also looks like a clone of the Old system stats for the
| GNOME 2 panel.
|
| It made more sense when I used a dirt cheap computer and
| squeezed every Hz of it.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| I did the same. I used to have iStat Menus running all the
| time, until i took a good look at how many resources it
| actually consumed showing me things i never looked at.
|
| These days i keep Little Snitch's network monitor around, which
| i actually do look at sometimes, though mostly to get a glance
| at where my traffic is going.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Looks nice. Any suggestions for a similar graphical tool for
| Linux?
| mmwelt wrote:
| If you're using Gnome, you could try the system-monitor-next
| extension[1]. The main thing to note when installing for the
| first time is that you'll also need to install a few system
| packages[2].
|
| [1] https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/3010/system-
| monitor-n...
|
| [2] https://github.com/mgalgs/gnome-shell-system-monitor-next-
| ap...
| imp0cat wrote:
| There is (also a Gnome-only) lightweight alternative called
| Vitals:
|
| https://github.com/corecoding/Vitals/issues
| Vitals is a GNOME Shell extension for displaying your
| computer's temperature, voltage, fan speed, memory usage,
| processor load, system resources, network speed and storage
| stats in your GNOME Shell's top menu bar. This is a one stop
| shop to monitor all of your vital sensors. Vitals uses
| asynchronous polling to provide a smooth user experience.
| damonlrr wrote:
| Same as hombre_fatal - I used to use iStats Menus, but no need
| any longer. This is great. I'm watching multiple SSDs activity,
| network activity, cpu, memory, etc.
| righthand wrote:
| Interesting to see MacOS users finally get an option like this.
| KDE Plasma has this for the past 5+ years, you can even create
| little custom reporting widgets with various system information
| and different chart designs.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| This didn't just come out, this has been available on MacOS for
| years.
| talldayo wrote:
| I love the way KDE handles system monitor widgets, especially
| nowadays. It's great for people that want to make graphs with
| desperate sensors like plotting your CPU temp against your GPU
| temp or your IO speed with your network speed.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've used Stats for years and loved it -- for CPU, GPU, memory,
| and network upload/download speeds.
|
| It's fantastic for catching when a bunch of processes haven't
| been killed and are stuck at 100%. For figuring out if my code is
| actually running on the GPU or not. For seeing what my network
| transfer rates are, when a download or transfer gets stuck, and
| which process is suddenly downloading hundreds of megabytes
| without telling me?
|
| It gives me the security I have a top-level overview of what my
| computer's up to. Can't imagine my menubar without it.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah, I've always been a fan of having something like this
| going. I have found bugs in my software just from having the
| continuous graph somewhere. "Why am I using 100% of the CPU for
| no reason right now? Oh, after 10 minutes without a request it
| enters an infinite loop here..."
|
| Back in the old days the fans going to 100% was a good bug
| finder. But computers can be so quiet now, you have to use your
| eyes ;)
| Sharlin wrote:
| In my Intel MBP there's an auditory warning when something is
| stuck at 100% utilization =D
| jmmv wrote:
| > It's fantastic for catching when a bunch of processes haven't
| been killed and are stuck at 100%.
|
| Exactly! I've been using iStat Menus for years and I find it
| invaluable. I've been able to identify system-wide problems a
| few times already just by glancing at the graphs and going
| "huh, that should not be happening right now". And it's not
| just stuck processes, but also misbehaving processes.
|
| I did blog about this situation over a year ago here:
| https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/hard-disk-leds-and-noisy-...
| :)
| behnamoh wrote:
| it phones home, make sure to disable its internet connection
| using Lulu or something.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Checking for updates is not the same as "phoning home".
| selcuka wrote:
| It also comes with telemetry, but you can disable it.
| rendx wrote:
| Actually, it is. Just because you deem that innocent enough
| "because everyone is doing it", it still leaks a lot of
| information to various parties.
| behnamoh wrote:
| it connects to the maintainer's personal website IP.
| soheil wrote:
| Reminds of MenuMeters - really great at showing real-time metrics
| and various types of graphs with different refresh intervals.
|
| https://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan/
| kfarr wrote:
| Aww yeah, I've been rocking menu meters for almost a decade
| now. I can't believe people get by without a bandwidth meter at
| least, so helpful for so many reasons
| soheil wrote:
| Should be built-in to the OS, bandwidth meter is way more
| important than battery % specially with modern MacBooks
| lasting over 10 hours.
| nedt wrote:
| Oh yeah using that since I had my Powerbook. Must be 20 years.
| So happy that the fork exists and keeps it running.
| Arubis wrote:
| I've been using iPulse (https://ipulseapp.com/) for about twenty
| years now. It gets consistent compliments and questions from
| shoulder-surfers because it looks great, and it doesn't take much
| screen real estate. No affiliation, strong recommendation.
| eviks wrote:
| Unfortunately worse and not as compact/configurable as the paid
| iStat menu option, and that's something the dev doesn't want to
| change...
| whalesalad wrote:
| Well it's free so...
| waterTanuki wrote:
| what's the advantage of this over something like btop?
| newdee wrote:
| This is glanceable from (and permanently resident in) the
| status bar and isn't a TUI app. Although one may not see those
| as advantages...
| BohdanPetryshyn wrote:
| I have happily used the free Stats app for a couple of years now.
|
| Hey iStat users, what makes the paid tool worth it for you?
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| Looks better, support weather, supports more sensors, more
| configuration options... But Stats is sufficient, I just use
| iStats for ages and it ask for little money ~two times in a
| decade.
| snshn wrote:
| Could you please it put it in the store? Or add to brew?
| whalesalad wrote:
| Did you look at the readme? It's right there at the top dude.
| smcleod wrote:
| Stats is great! The only issue I've had with it is each time it
| updates itself as it's unsigned the binary is flagged and can't
| be opened until you run xattr -rc /Applications/Stats.app on it.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Huh? That doesn't happen to me. Mine is signed.
| cyberax wrote:
| Love Stats. My only problem with it was remembering its name when
| I was setting up a new laptop.
|
| On my previous laptop, I set it up once and then forgot about it.
| No need to update, no fuss, it just worked.
| nusl wrote:
| Why does it ask for Bluetooth permissions on launch?
| SG- wrote:
| I found Stats would use quite a bit more CPU usage compared to
| iStats menus when I last tried it 3-4 months ago.
| bilekas wrote:
| Oooh this is nice actually, I am curious though, are there any
| plans to integrate this into the Touch Bar ? I would offer to do
| it myself or at least have a crack at it but I haven't ever
| developed for the TouchBar and my motivation to start isn't too
| high..
| seam_carver wrote:
| Used this to identify that my 2019 16" MBP with 5300M GPU was
| drawing 20W at idle from the gpu when connected to a 1440p60
| monitor.
| resource_waste wrote:
| Its been a long time since I've seen the word MacOS.
|
| Seems like with AI + the faux Apple claims of running (any
| meaningful) AI, people are just not using it.
|
| Like there has been a near total drop-off of mention since ~May
| 2024.
| bruckie wrote:
| I miss being able to hear the click of the hard drive to know
| when my system was doing a lot of disk IO, which often was caused
| by swapping when RAM had been exceeded. I wonder if there's
| something that turns high utilization into an audible signal
| these days.
| tempodox wrote:
| > There is no way to obtain a CPU frequency on Apple silicon
| macs.
|
| Ha! You can rip my Intel Mac from my cold, dead hands.
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