Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar
174 comments
·January 30, 2025crazygringo
Sharlin
In my Intel MBP there’s an auditory warning when something is stuck at 100% utilization =D
jmmv
> 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-... :)
jrockway
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 ;)
js2
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
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.
msravi
I think in the latest nightly, this is about:processes
brailsafe
It's also often just ads, and installing a blocker helps
dylan604
blockers are fully engaged. it's not definitely not ads.
draculero
do you mean `about:processes`?
`about://performance` doesn't work at least from my FF, but `about:performance` redirects to `about:processes`
dylan604
yes. about:performance
the // was just muscle memory/brain fart/oops
i never really noticed it redirected to processes.
JayDustheadz
omg thank you so much for this! Totally did not know this could be done from within FF!
stogot
Inhad no idea this existed.!
seemaze
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
Thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, the option I'd want - memory utilization - doesn't seem to be one of the choices.
Dragonai
+1, thank you js2!
LeoPanthera
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
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
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.
8fingerlouie
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.
ChrisMarshallNY
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
I’m very curious what it is doing to panic your computer
ChrisMarshallNY
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.
leidenfrost
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.
your_challenger
TIL you can set live dock icons. This is all I need too. Thank you.
parl_match
iStat menus hit a lot harder when 8GB of RAM was a $2000 upgrade.
ChrisMarshallNY
I remember when 4MB 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
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
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.
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.
bogantech
> IMO it's essential to see cpu / mem / network consumption at all times
Why?
steve_adams_86
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.
hombre_fatal
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.
syndicatedjelly
At minimum, to just develop a sense of how the computer loads and de-loads as various services or programs are called
cosmic_cheese
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.
saagarjha
Tells me when something is done
soheil
Reminds of MenuMeters - really great at showing real-time metrics and various types of graphs with different refresh intervals.
kfarr
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
Should be built-in to the OS, bandwidth meter is way more important than battery % specially with modern MacBooks lasting over 10 hours.
nedt
Oh yeah using that since I had my Powerbook. Must be 20 years. So happy that the fork exists and keeps it running.
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.
throwaway314155
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.
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.
jshier
Latest redesign is pretty garbage though. I want my precise graphs back!
DavideNL
I agree, verschlimmbesserung...
- "The German word "Verschlimmbesserung" is a compound noun that combines "verschlimmern" (to make worse) and "verbessern" (to improve). It refers to a situation where an attempt to improve something unintentionally makes it worse. This term is often used humorously or critically to describe well-intentioned actions or changes that backfire and lead to negative outcomes instead of the desired improvements"
blacksmith_tb
I paid for it, and paid for one upgrade, but stats looks like it covers all of what I am interested in.
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!
imagetic
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.
null
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.
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
iforgotmysocks
This makes me cringe. No one talks like that
michaelcampbell
No one uses footnotes in a webforum other than here either, but here we are.
rodgerd
No-one you know, old person.
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
benreesman
It’s pretty close to this meme from like a year ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1963h4k/cs...
natebc
It's like ZoomerGPT or something. I actually needed a smile so i appreciated it.
null
itsmemattchung
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
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.
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?
imagetic
Ice is great. Took some fiddling but I have been stoked on it.
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.
ElijahLynn
Thanks, I'm totally gonna try that!
compootr
weird, they all appeared for me
LeoPanthera
Open source and especially free open source apps probably don't care too much about the "onboarding experience".
Arubis
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.
SG-
I found Stats would use quite a bit more CPU usage compared to iStats menus when I last tried it 3-4 months ago.
acherion
Neat little app, but it made bluetoothd go bananas on my CPU, chewing up to 40% (M2 MBA here)
doug_life
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.
cyberax
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.
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.