mactop

mactop is a terminal-based monitoring tool "top" designed to display real-time metrics for Apple Silicon chips written by Carsen Klock. It provides a simple and efficient way to monitor CPU and GPU usage, E-Cores and P-Cores, power consumption, and other system metrics directly from your terminal!

Compatibility

• Apple Silicon Only (ARM64)
• macOS Monterey 12.3+

Features

• Apple Silicon Monitor Top written in Go Lang and CGO
• Real-time CPU and GPU power wattage usage display.
• Detailed native metrics for CPU cores (E and P cores) (Apple's Mach Kernel API)
• Memory usage and swap information.
• Network usage information
• Disk Activity Read/Write
• Easy-to-read terminal UI
• Two layouts: default and alternative
• Customizable UI color (green, red, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow, and white)
• Customizable update interval (default is 1000ms)
• Processes list (sorted by CPU usage)
• Disk Storage (Used, Total, Available)
• Party Mode (Randomly cycles through colors)
• Support for all Apple Silicon models.

Install via Homebrew

You can install mactop via Homebrew! https://brew.sh

brew install mactop

sudo mactop

Updating via Homebrew

brew update

brew upgrade mactop

Installation

To install mactop, follow these steps:

1. Ensure you have Go installed on your machine. If not, you can install it by following the instructions here: Go Installation Guide.

2. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/context-labs/mactop.git
   cd mactop

3. Build the application:

   go build

4. Run the application:

   sudo ./mactop

Usage

After installation, you can start mactop by simply running:

sudo ./mactop

sudo is required to run mactop

Example with flags

sudo mactop --interval 1000 --color green

mactop Flags

• --interval or -i: Set the powermetrics update interval in milliseconds. Default is 1000. (For low-end M chips, you may want to increase this value)
• --color or -c: Set the UI color. Default is white. Options are 'green', 'red', 'blue', 'cyan', 'magenta', 'yellow', and 'white'. (-c green)
• --version or -v: Print the version of mactop.
• --help or -h: Show a help message about these flags and how to run mactop.

mactop Commands

Use the following keys to interact with the application while its running:

• q: Quit the application.
• r: Refresh the UI data manually.
• c: Cycle through the color themes.
• p: Party Mode (Randomly cycles through colors)
• l: Toggle the main display's layout.
• h: Toggle the help menu.

Example Theme (Green) Screenshot (sudo mactop -c green) on Advanced layout (Hit "l" key to toggle)

Confirmed tested working M series chips

• M1
• M1 Pro
• M1 Max
• M1 Ultra
• M2
• M2 Pro
• M2 Max
• M2 Ultra
• M3
• M3 Pro
• M3 Max
• M4
• M4 Pro
• M4 Max

(If you have a confirmed working M series chip that is not listed, please open an issue, so we may add it here!)

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

1. Fork mactop
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

What does mactop use to get real-time data?

• sysctl: For CPU model information
• system_profiler: For GPU Core Count
• psutil: For memory and swap metrics
• powermetrics: For majority of GPU, Network, and Disk metrics
• host_processor_info: For CPU metrics (E and P cores) Apple Mach Kernel API in CGO

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Author and Contact

Carsen Klock - @carsenklock

Project Link: https://github.com/context-labs/mactop

Disclaimer

This tool is not officially supported by Apple. It is provided as is, and may not work as expected. Use at your own risk.

Acknowledgements

• termui for the terminal UI framework.
• gopsutil for system memory monitoring.
• asitop for the original inspiration!
• htop for the process list and CPU cores inspiration!