Can I see my CPU and memory usage meters in the menu bar?

Question

I'd like to be able to view my cpu and memory usage in real time. Not as a desktop widget or window application, but as a widget in the menu bar. Is this possible?

Take a look into menumeters, the description sounds like just what you're after. — , Mar 12 '11 at 09:41
If you don't want to use third-party software, you can also use Activity Monitor (however, it's on the Dock, not the menu bar). Do this by opening Activity Monitor > View > Dock Icon > Show CPU Usage — Munesawagi, Mar 23 '16 at 17:03
Menu Meters is not officially compatible with El Capitan. Here's a source for an unofficial version. — IconDaemon, Apr 12 '16 at 20:17
I'm willing to reverse my vote if there is some consensus on [meta] or an edit to make is clearer how this is different than the other list of tools. We might need a side discussion on list of X questions as they have other issues that generally get them closed or down voted into oblivion. I've removed the wiki since we generally don't use that anymore. — bmike, May 09 '16 at 11:17
@bmike, I changed the subject, so the sense is encapsulated within it, and it would be better for SEO. Voted for reopening. And thank you for the input regarding wiki, this concept is confusing for sure, I bet most of people don't understand it, and there are no clear criteria and flow for this type of question. — Farside, May 09 '16 at 12:01
CleanMyMacX has a free menu bar tools, just disable the things you don't like. But it has no option for the disk usage. — trinity420, Jul 07 '19 at 10:43
It's 2021 and we now have Stats - it's a free and opensource app that can show usage graphs for many aspects of the systems. — sfxedit, Feb 01 '21 at 23:53
Given the complex nature of memory management (and CPU management, what with multiple performance and efficiency cores), I question the merit of needing to check some summary of the activity frequently. — benwiggy, Sep 01 '21 at 12:09

score 135 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 25 '22 at 20:32

135

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is Stats, which describes itself as a

Simple macOS system monitor in your menu bar

It's an excellent open source project (https://github.com/exelban/stats) that can be installed via:

brew install stats

On big sur, after downloading, open launchpad, search for 'stats', and open it. It will start showing up in the menu bar.

edited Sep 25 '22 at 20:32

Dmitry Tarashkevich

3

answered Aug 14 '20 at 20:09

friederbluemle

1,736

1

I can't see this in BigSur after installing. – imflash217 Mar 31 '21 at 00:39
1

The app's UI in the menu bar is fantastic. One nit though is that it is showing somewhat different utilization % compared to the Activity Monitor, plus the most CPU consuming processes are different in Stats and Activity Monitory. – Bananeen Sep 08 '22 at 18:23

score 60 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 23 '16 at 16:44

60

I use MenuMeters for this functionality, and have a hard time living without it. How do other people know when their web browser is finally done downloading a page, or YouTube stalled out, or iPhoto still working, or ...?

MenuMeters is freeware, but well worth the donation.

The original author has stopped maintaining MenuMeters, but someone new has taken over for El Capitan.

edited Mar 23 '16 at 16:44

Dan Pritts

121

answered Sep 08 '10 at 06:25

Michael H.

1,025

I wasn't able to get this to work. After unzipping, running installer, and logging out/in, it doesn't appear on the menubar. – spong Sep 08 '10 at 11:28
5

@sunpech: Did you enable them from the Menu Meters Preference Pane? By default they don't enable until you say you want them. – Chealion Sep 08 '10 at 16:06
What Chealion said: Did you go to the MenuMeters pref pane (at the bottom, in the "Other" category in System Preferences) to turn on the meters you'd like? – Michael H. Sep 10 '10 at 06:36
2

I love MenuMeters. I'd vote it up, but I'm out of votes for today. :-( – daviesgeek Oct 19 '11 at 19:01
Does this work with the new memory management in mavericks? – AlikElzin-kilaka Feb 23 '14 at 16:56
Activity monitor reports 7.78 GB of memory used, while MenuMeters reports around 5 GB of memory used. Any ideas about the discrepancy? I'm mostly just concerned with when my computer starts swapping. (should I make a separate question?) – Gordon Gustafson Jul 17 '14 at 21:32
AlikElzin-kilaka @GordonGustafson, good questions! I'm on Yosemite now, and I do see a disparity in reports. Since Activity Monitor & MenuMeters both break down the categories of active memory, I can see that Wired & Compressed Memory are reporting the same amounts in both. However, "App Memory" in Activity Monitor is higher than it is in MenuMeters for me. Will write to developer. – Michael H. Aug 27 '15 at 02:46
2

Update - I was previously on 1.7. Upgraded to 1.8.1 to go with Yosemite and numbers are much closer now. FYI, developer says he will not update for El Capitan due to Apple policies; we'll see if MenuMeters keeps working then. – Michael H. Aug 27 '15 at 03:13
7

A new author has taken over development of MenuMeters and it works with 10.11. El Capitan MenuMeters – Dan Pritts Mar 23 '16 at 15:21
Upvoted this. Wish I could do more: in fact I wish I'd seen it before I payed for SystemPal ;-) – mike Apr 23 '16 at 23:39
Just a note - if you use TimeMachine and are having slow backups now with El Capitan, try disabling the disk monitoring in Menu Meters. See thread here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7275653?start=60&tstart=0 – Michael H. Jun 01 '16 at 18:36
You can also read tips on turning off I/O throttling, and seeing if backupd is being throttled, here: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/212537/time-machine-ridiculously-slow-after-el-capitan-upgrade/219884#219884 – Michael H. Jun 01 '16 at 18:37
1

FWIW, I appear to have switched to iStatMenus for this. I don't remember why, but I'm guessing it has to do with better support for current OS and hardware. – Michael H. May 30 '20 at 23:51
For macOS Mojave (10.14+) and later use: https://github.com/yujitach/MenuMeters – Adrian Jun 03 '20 at 14:47

score 40 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 01 '21 at 19:43

40

iStat Menus has the functionality you are asking for. It is available starting at USD$14.39 for a single license or $17.99 for a family pack (up to five different Macs). It's also included with a membership to SetApp.

edited Dec 01 '21 at 19:43

Merchako

1,106

answered Sep 08 '10 at 05:32

raimue

1,235

+1 I really like this one. can customize how much is shown and it seems to perform very well. I may actually buy it. – spong Sep 08 '10 at 11:27
2

I also like it and I still use the old free version. What I don't like is that it invites you to upgrade without informing you that it costs money afterwards. – robcast Sep 09 '10 at 10:16
Does this work with the new memory management in mavericks? – AlikElzin-kilaka Feb 23 '14 at 16:56
Sorry, I switched to the paid version of iStat Menus 4 some time ago. This one works fine on Mavericks. I can't comment whether the old versions 2.x or 3.x still work. – raimue Feb 24 '14 at 16:07
I find iState Menus per-app memory reporting quite incorrect. – Matt Sephton Apr 18 '18 at 10:17
1

@MattSephton What do you base that on? – David Nov 01 '18 at 19:08
@David Young iStat Menus reports memory differently compared to MacOS Activity Monitor (which is what I expect and was looking for). Read more about it on the official FAQ: https://bjango.com/help/istatmenus6/memory/ – Matt Sephton Nov 01 '18 at 19:17
@MattSephton Ahh, I see. What iStats does is actually the behavior I generally prefer, personally. As it mentions in that page, you can also disable it to get Activity Monitor-like memory reporting. Either way, I wouldn't call it "incorrect." – David Nov 01 '18 at 19:25
Perhaps. Sadly my earlier comment is so old I can't edit it to be more accurate. – Matt Sephton Nov 01 '18 at 19:26
1

There's a comprehensive exchange between the developer and I on twitter. Here is one part https://mobile.twitter.com/bjango/status/987190421997740032 – Matt Sephton Nov 01 '18 at 19:31
1

I tried many of the solutions listed. For free options, a combination of https://github.com/iglance/iGlance and https://github.com/yujitach/MenuMeters gets the job done. However, I kinda like the label from iStats, so I might settle with that one. – Adrian Jun 03 '20 at 15:24

score 33 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 19 '19 at 19:09

33

Check out iGlance it's open source.

iglance screenshot

answered Jun 19 '19 at 19:09

BenRoe

534

2

Exactly what I was looking for. – cmcginty Jun 05 '20 at 08:10
3

brew install --cask iglance – fafrd May 16 '21 at 03:23

score 19 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 18 '14 at 13:36

19

MenuMeters is popular among the Mac users I know.

edited Feb 18 '14 at 13:36

grg

201,078

answered Mar 12 '11 at 09:41

geekosaur

4,797

Since I may come across people here who may have used MenuMeters, I would like to ask whether it is stable in terms of memory leaks and crashes. – ayaz Mar 13 '11 at 05:28
@ayaz - You should ask this as it's own question – cdeszaq Nov 25 '12 at 19:57
7

Doesn't work with El Capitan. – Restuta Oct 16 '15 at 20:19
@ayaz: never had a crash on Yosemite ever.. unfortunately it doesn't work on the new El Captain, due to Apple's code signature restrictions. – Henrique de Sousa Oct 24 '15 at 00:43
1

It's free and open source and there's a fork that DOES work with El Capitan, @Restuta – WHO'sNoToOldRx4Covid-CENSORED Nov 16 '15 at 08:11
7

The fork for El Capitan is here http://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan/ – user454322 Mar 07 '16 at 05:01

score 14 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 12 '16 at 11:48

14

For OS X 10.11 or later, use this fork of MenuMeters: http://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan/

(Open the .prefPane file by Ctrl clicking and selecting Open.)

answered Apr 12 '16 at 11:48

the

1,335

score 8 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 05 '18 at 20:54

8

I created a free app that shows percentage on the menu bar:

You can download it from here:

https://github.com/joelmora/macos-activity-monitor

answered Nov 05 '18 at 20:54

Joel Mora

81
1
1

Thanks for that! Easy and simple - working on M2 chipset. – Vojtech Cerveny Aug 30 '22 at 09:57

score 7 · Answer 8 · edited Feb 18 '14 at 13:38

7

iStat Menus is an app by Mac / iOS developers Bjango, but it's not free ($16).

edited Feb 18 '14 at 13:38

grg

201,078

answered Mar 12 '11 at 09:45

Jack

271

score 7 · Answer 9 · edited Oct 10 '19 at 19:00

MenuMeters

Official website, free & open-source
A fork of MenuMeters is being maintained for El Capitan+ including Mojave and Catalina: Maintained Fork Repo

Features:

CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for Mac OS X;
are a true SystemUIServer plugins (also known as Menu Extras);
Net Meter can display network throughput as arrows, bytes per second, and/or as a graph.
minimalism: extremely lightweight and dumb simple;
size is ~1Mb;
open-source, freeware.

Official website states about exception:

MenuMeters cannot be used on 10.11 El Capitan

But I managed to run on OS X El Capitan (10.11.3) without any problems, I will provide the link on re-compiled version, as this tool is opensource. It works like a charm for a last year, not a single issue found even after automatic system updates.

Configuration screenshot:

score 7 · Answer 10 · answered Apr 13 '16 at 07:22

7

I made a simple app that displays cpu and memory usage on menubar, free and open sourced. Feedback is welcome.

https://github.com/ningt/iStats

answered Apr 13 '16 at 07:22

tning

229

RAM usage display seems non-standard or even not-accurate? – Matt Sephton Apr 18 '18 at 10:03

score 7 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 01 '21 at 11:48

7

I really liked eul. Slick design and great configuration ability. Widgets are also available.

brew install --cask eul

or install from Mac App Store.

answered Sep 01 '21 at 11:48

Lufa

71

score 5 · Answer 12 · answered Feb 18 '14 at 13:12

5

I prefer SystemPal. iStat itself consumes too much CPU and RAM. SystemPal is quick, tiny, configurable, neat, and powerful. It's available on Mac App Store.

answered Feb 18 '14 at 13:12

Vince Yuan

437

Still costs dollars, but much fewer than iStat Menus does, so thank you :) – mike Apr 23 '16 at 23:36

perhapsmaybeharry · Answer 13 · 2016-04-04T14:06:06.470

5

iStat Menus

Official Website (single license: $18, "family pack" (5 licenses): $25, FREE trial: 14 days)

Features include (but not limited to):

CPU usage
Process usage breakdown
GPU usage (includes FPS)
Current uptime
Memory usage/pressure
- app/wired/compressed memory
- swap memory monitoring
Disk IO (external disks supported)
Network monitoring
- Individual interface upload/download, total data transferred, peak speeds etc
Sensors (temperatures, ambient light, power draw current/volts)
Battery information (health, capacity)
World Clock
(my personal favorite) graphs of the item for the past hour, twenty-four hours and seven days

Size: 58.7 MB
Customization Options:

the entire layout of the menubar dropdown is completely customizable and displayed in a user-defined layout
the type of graph displayed can be customised (opposed, centered, stacked)
the skin of the app can be customised (dark, light, other colors as well)
menubar footprint is customisable as well

Screenshot(s):

Main overview, CPU, memory, sensors

Menubar footprint

Main app window

Resource usage: iStat Menus is on the low-medium end of the resource consumption spectrum. The app uses about 100-150 MB of RAM at any one time, and has minimal impact on the CPU.

edited Apr 04 '16 at 14:06

answered Apr 04 '16 at 12:10

perhapsmaybeharry

3,761

can the screenshots be reduced in size, or is it possible somehow to shrink the answer and to make it laconic and easy to read? or even to reduce/align the number of screenshots. thank you. – Farside Apr 04 '16 at 13:06
I'm trying to do that right now, actually. They're quite annoying having to scroll so much. Sorry about that – perhapsmaybeharry Apr 04 '16 at 13:07
Okay, so it seems I can't find a way. I'm going to take this matter to meta – perhapsmaybeharry Apr 04 '16 at 13:15
@perhapsmaybeharry see the answer to http://meta.apple.stackexchange.com/questions/2738/how-can-we-reduce-the-size-of-a-image-while-editing – nohillside Apr 04 '16 at 13:33
Yep, got it from there. I hope it looks better now – perhapsmaybeharry Apr 04 '16 at 13:36
1

How this app can use 50Mb, if the packed DMG is around the same size? Lots of controls, widgets, graphs, etc... When I tried this, I think it was closer to ~300Mb in the memory, constantly, I think it's way too much for being lightweight, for what is does. – Farside Apr 04 '16 at 13:54
htop reports current app RAM usage to be 102MB. Make sure the main "customisation" window isn't open, that takes some RAM as well. – perhapsmaybeharry Apr 04 '16 at 13:58

score 5 · Answer 14 · edited Mar 15 '17 at 10:48

5

This is an old questions, but newcomers might be interested in Übersicht. This allows you to display the information on the desktop, not the menu bar, much like in Conky.

Übersicht uses HTML5 web technology, so has a very modern feel to customize.

edited Mar 15 '17 at 10:48

John N

1,487

answered Mar 15 '17 at 10:18

Gilly

151

score 5 · Answer 15 · answered Jun 26 '17 at 14:17

5

A free open source solution is CpuInfo on GitHub (shows cpu only)

answered Jun 26 '17 at 14:17

laktak

3,198

Clean, simple and open source – BenRoe Jun 19 '19 at 19:03

score 4 · Answer 16 · answered Nov 21 '16 at 23:51

4

iStat Menus 5 now has a free version and works well for monitoring all kinds of system stats, including CPU and memory.

answered Nov 21 '16 at 23:51

David Baker

151

2

It's not free - it's only a 15 day trial version. – Pierz Sep 07 '18 at 16:15

score 4 · Answer 17 · answered Apr 29 '21 at 12:20

4

Not sure how long this has been a feature, but it's possible to replace the Activity Monitor dock icon with a graph showing CPU usage, CPU history, network usage, or disk activity.

For example, showing CPU history turns the icon into this little graph:

answered Apr 29 '21 at 12:20

Simon Alford

243
2
5

Great find, not sure why this is not the default. – Pieter Jul 26 '22 at 06:34
Probably b/c it doesn't have a memory usage graph option. – agileMike May 23 '23 at 16:59

calum_b · Answer 18 · 2016-04-04T15:02:19.237

3

BitBar

Official site (free, open source)

The BitBar app lets you put the output from any script or program right in your Mac OS X menu bar. And it's completely free. An impressive number of plugins have already been contributed by a wide range of developers just like you, and this site makes it easy to find them.

The website does indeed list a large number of network and system plugins for monitoring CPU usage, uptime, battery status,etc., and of course you can write your own; they're just shell scripts.

edited Apr 04 '16 at 15:02

answered Apr 04 '16 at 14:56

calum_b

5,921
30
37

OMG, this one is really feature rich beast, tons of different plugins, widgets, utilities! I definitely would try. – Farside Apr 04 '16 at 15:11

score 1 · Answer 19 · answered Apr 04 '16 at 09:13

SystemPal

AppStore ($1.99)

Shows memory/CPU usage status, CPU temperature and fan speed, network status and disk reading/writing status on status bar.
provides a tool kit including mini music player,
screenshot capture,
memory cleaner.
size: 1.0 MB

Screenshot:

dumb025 · Answer 20 · 2017-05-29T13:30:37.077

Übersicht allows for creation of conky-like widgets using coffeeScript. coffeeScript uses HTML. So, display options, such as text size, font and opacity of the background are easily set. The widget sits in front of the background image, but behind any desktop items. Übersicht has many user contributed, downloadable widgets.

I created a conky-like widget for Mac and OS X using Übersicht: https://github.com/dumbo25/conky-for-mac

score 1 · Answer 21 · answered Nov 07 '11 at 09:05

1

Or you can try some geeklets from the internet (or make one yourself) on Geektool. I find it more customizable than menu bar apps, and prettier when I get to use the fonts and sizes I like.

answered Nov 07 '11 at 09:05

abc905

554

1

I did that! I had a nice weather.com geeklet on my desktop. And then I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and the geektool is failing for mysterious reasons, and I have to debug it. :-/ – Michael H. Nov 08 '12 at 19:38
You could try using Übersicht – Oion Akif Feb 22 '17 at 17:35

score 1 · Answer 22 · answered Feb 01 '21 at 18:16

1

Haven't seen this one mentioned yet: Menu Bar Stats 3

answered Feb 01 '21 at 18:16

minusf

170

score 1 · Answer 23 · answered Jul 06 '23 at 19:23

I also made LoadViz! ^

Runs in the macOS menu bar, shows user (flames) and system (clouds) CPU load.

The most loaded cores are rendered in the middle, so a single pillar of fire would mean one core is working. A cloud that is evenly distributed would mean same system load across all cores.

Memory usage doesn't really matter, and memory pressure can be inferred from system load, see web page for details.

To install, brew install walles/johan/loadviz, then open Applications in Finder and right click to launch. Or just build it from source.

netzbub · Answer 24 · 2024-03-18T02:55:57.513

stats, MenuMeters, iStat Menus - are all awesome.

For CPU usage I still ˇLOVEˇ to use "CPU LED" - which was written back in 2011 and is still running under Sonoma 14.3.1 ... Downloads from cnet.com or macupdate.com

The preferences UI-design is definitely (!) from those years - for the CPU animation in the menu bar there are around 45 styles to choose from - colored, b&w, some slim, others taking a third of the space of your menubar . Developers site doesn't exist any more. Latest existing version seems to be 1.3.

score 0 · Answer 25 · answered Oct 11 '15 at 18:09

The iPulse program has been doing this since 2002.

It is recently updated for the Mac App Store and El Capitan and also works on older OS.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ipulse/id1028916583?mt=12

It's menu centric, dock centric and/or HUD style visualizations so you can choose exactly what and how you monitor the system performance.

score 0 · Answer 26 · answered May 29 '23 at 04:19

I made Bubblemon. Water surface level shows memory usage, bubbles show CPU load (heaviest loaded core bubbles in the middle), and the green things growing from the bottom are IO load. Fogs up when battery starts running low. Turns red on swapping.

Install:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/walles/bubblemon/master/osx/install.sh | bash

Source code: https://github.com/walles/bubblemon

Thinkr · Answer 27 · 2023-05-29T14:06:12.240

xbar

xbar (download link) allows you to add a large number of plug-ins and menus to the menu bar. There are, of course, pre-made plugins that show CPU load and memory usage. Here are the ones I found that might interest you:

Memory usage (Shows the current system memmory usage)
CPU Load (Shows CPU load as a percentage (without using top))
CPU Temperature (This plugin displays the current CPU temperature (requires external 'smc' binary))
CPU Usage Graph (CPU usage bar graph)
CPU Usage, Kill process (Shows top 3 consuming processes with opportunity to kill them)
CPU thermal throttling (Displays the current CPU thermal throttling speed (using pmset -g therm))
Real CPU Usage (Calcualtes and displays real CPU usage stats)
Real CPU Usage chart (Chart CPU usage over last minute)

score -5 · Answer 28 · edited Oct 11 '15 at 18:02

-5

I recommend app called CheckMyMac

http://www.nomasoftwares.com

edited Oct 11 '15 at 18:02

Roma-MT

103

answered Apr 25 '15 at 11:57

user123454

5

Please read the [FAQ], especially http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/promotion and http://apple.stackexchange.com/help/behavior – nohillside Apr 25 '15 at 12:30