Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar
74 comments
·January 30, 2025js2
dylan604
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.
brailsafe
It's also often just ads, and installing a blocker helps
hombre_fatal
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.
crazygringo
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.
ElijahLynn
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.
freehorse
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
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSpacing
defaults -currentHost delete -globalDomain NSStatusItemSelectionPadding
lukevp
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.
freehorse
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
natebc
It's like ZoomerGPT or something. I actually needed a smile so i appreciated it.
benreesman
It’s pretty close to this meme from like a year ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1963h4k/cs...
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iforgotmysocks
This makes me cringe. No one talks like that
bolognafairy
stickin out ya notch for the rizzler
hombre_fatal
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.
Kovah
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.
Khaine
You can also use Ice[1], which does the same thing and is open source
jedberg
Looks like the features are very similar. Is there anything the commercial product does that the open source doesn't?
ElijahLynn
Thanks, I'm totally gonna try that!
compootr
weird, they all appeared for me
herrkanin
I've been for many years a happily paying customer of iStat Menus [1], from which this seem to be the heavily inspired of.
varenc
++ 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.
imagetic
I've lost count of how many years I've owned a Bjango license. Amazing software.
bolognafairy
One, two, three…Christ, 16 years here. This made me feel terrible. Thanks!
blacksmith_tb
I paid for it, and paid for one upgrade, but stats looks like it covers all of what I am interested in.
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aucisson_masque
Been using stats for 4 years now, never had any issue with it. why pay when something free and open source is available.
acherion
Neat little app, but it made bluetoothd go bananas on my CPU, chewing up to 40% (M2 MBA here)
grishka
Heh, I installed this and immediately found out that "LegacyScreenSaver" has leaked 40 GB of memory.
sammcgrail
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
No, it's my personal laptop and the screensaver is definitely native (ARM). It's probably just Apple being sloppy again.
soheil
Reminds of MenuMeters - really great at showing real-time metrics and various types of graphs with different refresh intervals.
spiantino
Stats + Hidden Bar + Brave are my first 3 downloads on any new Mac
mattrighetti
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.
damonlrr
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.
evanjrowley
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
reminds me of power tools
null
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.