Here are the best apps for monitoring your Mac's performance! IStat Menus Even though Macs do pretty well in the power and memory management departments on their own, there are still some apps out there that contain memory leaks or other problems that can hog system resources. IStat Menus can not only alert you to performance and memory.
- Today, the Innovation and Custom Engineering (ICE) Applied Research team presents the public release of Monitor.app for macOS, a simple GUI application for monitoring common system events on a macOS host. Monitor.app captures the following event types: Process execution with command line arguments File creates (if data is written).
- Here we listed some basic Mac screen recorder software for free and a couple of paid recorder apps that has some extended features best for professional use. Free Screen Recorders Apps for Mac When you go for Mac free screen recorder, please keep in mind, many of them will come with time-limited recording, or some features will be missing.
A lot of Mac users have a “live and let live” philosophy when it comes to their Macs. They know their Mac is more than equipped to take care of performance issues on its own so they mostly leave it alone.
But if you use your Mac for more than just surfing the web or writing, I’m sure you’re interested to know what exactly is going on in there. Precious data about the CPU usage can be incredibly helpful for video editors. App developers would be interested to know just how much RAM and internet speed their app is taking up.
My Mac is almost three years old now with only 4 GB RAM. While it hasn’t given me any major issues, it does get problematic when I have far too many Chrome tabs open or when I launch a heavy app.
If you’re interested in knowing your CPU, memory, disk, and network usage at all times, check out the apps below.
MenuMeters
MenuMeters is a free app and is very reliable. Once installed, you’ll find it in System Preferences instead of as its own app.
Here you’ll find options to enable CPU, disk, memory, and network monitoring widgets that show up in the menu bar. The CPU widget can show up as a graph, percentage, or a thermometer. Just beware that MenuMeters monitors CPU thread as well as cores. If you have a quad-core Mac, just the CPU monitoring can take up half the menu bar.
Hot tip: Some of menu bar’s widgets, including system and MenuMeter widgets are movable. Just hold down the Command key and drag the selected widget.
MenuMeter’s memory widget is my favorite. You can have it display bar or chart graphs but I went with plain text. Knowing the exact amount of free RAM I have at any given point is exhilarating.
You can do the same with network speeds. Either opt for graphs or plain text (I went with the latter). All the elements in MenuMeters are immensely customizable. You can change the update intervals, display width for graphs and even change the colors for displayed elements.
Clicking on any menu bar widget gives you a dropdown with a detailed view of the stats.
MagicPaster
MagicPaster takes a different approach to system monitoring. Yes, the app’s icon sits in the menu bar but that’s just to bring up the settings.
MagicPaster floats sticky note windows with specific system stats over the screen. https://dbaulh.weebly.com/blog/track-mac-app-prices. You can invoke it using a special global hotkey Shift + Cmd + S and the stats will pop right up.
The app shows more stats than MenuMeters and as the app isn’t limited to the menu bar you get pie charts and graphs along with the text. You are free to move the little widgets around or to disable any.
MenuMeters vs MagicPaster
If you want an always present view of your RAM or network use, go with MenuMeters.
If you’re not actively looking to monitor your system but you do want instant access to the system details, download MagicPaster and use the global hotkey to bring up the stats in an instant.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#Lists #monitoring
Did You Know
IR blasters were available on old Nokia phones to transfer data.
More in Mac
Top 5 Fixes for iMessages Not Syncing on Your Mac
Your computer is equipped with a lot of sensors so that the system can keep an eye on the health of the hardware. macOS has a built-in system monitoring utility called Activity Monitor, which may be unfamiliar to most casual Mac users. And even fewer understand how to properly use Activity Monitor to manage memory usage, fix slow apps, and troubleshoot various many other issues.
Activity Monitor's advantage over all third party Mac monitoring apps is its ability to inspect and even kill a process that requires too many hardware resources. This is something no third party app has the permission to do, despite having access to all the sensor information data and displaying it in an easy-to-read design.
System Monitor Mac Os
iStat Menus
Available as a separate purchase or via Setapp, Bjango's iStat Menus is one of the best Mac monitoring apps available. You may already be familiar with the iStat Pro widget from the same developer, which displays the same data in the dashboard. One of the best things about iStat Menus is that there is a quick view for the essential data right in the menu bar. If you want more data and visuals, just click on the desired item. Customize the data by turning on the monitoring only for what you want it to keep an eye on. That's a nice advantage over the competing apps, even Bjango's own iStat widget which only displays all the information in one window.
iStat Menus, however, lets you monitor only the CPU, GPU, memory, disks, network, sensors, battery, power, time, or any combinations of these. Bjango's iStat Menus can be trialed for 14 days for free, but after that you'll need to purchase a license for $18 or upgrade for $9.99 if you already happen to own version 3 or 4. The Family Pack allows iStat Menus to be used on up to five Macs within the same household.
TG Pro
Monitors Compatible With Mac
Short for Temperature Gauge Pro, this tool could become a Mac monitoring utility that you become attached to. While iStat Menus only displays information, TG Pro goes one step further and offers an option to control your Mac's fans, along with offering an overview of the sensor data that macOS gives access to. That's a very important feature if you want the computer to deliver optimal performance. In addition, TG Pro offers a color-coded visual explanation of what is happening with the computer's internals: green means that you can relax, orange that the hardware is approaching its limits, and red represents that it is very close to the thermal limit.
What TG Pro does is provide control over the fan speed to cool down your Mac's hardware, which is especially useful on hot summer days when Macs tend to overheat. This Mac monitoring app will display quick temperature info in the menu bar, but to gain access to all the information available you’ll need to either click on the TG Pro item to see a quick overview of the data or launch the app and get visual information for the targeted segment. While the TG Pro trial gives 10 days of free testing, it unfortunately limits the data it displays and therefore pushes users to purchase a license for $18.
Best Second Monitor For Mac
XRG
Available as an open-source system monitor for Macs, XRG allows you to monitor CPU and GPU activity, memory usage, battery status, machine temperature, network activity, disk I/O, current weather, and stock market data. Just like the iStat Pro widget, it gives users a helpful overview of what is happening on your Mac, peppered with some handy visuals. In terms of the graphical user interface, XRG’s cannot be compared to that of iStat Menus or TG Pro but if you want a free app to have access to such data then XRG is a good option to choose.
Apps For Mac
Any one of these above apps will be useful to you if you are looking to optimize your Mac's performance. They each allow you to see – at a glance – the resource hogs that can be eliminated as well as all the data that your Mac’s sensors are collecting. That, combined with the use of Mac optimization apps such as CleanMyMac, CCleaner or MacKeeper https://dbaulh.weebly.com/blog/mac-app-automatically-take-photos-from-videos. , will create a computer that works optimally to perform all the tasks it is given.