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Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

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Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#161

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,…

> IMO it's essential to see cpu / mem / network consumption at all times Why?

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.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#162
post #160
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I can confirm it's exactly that. Basically Apple made a new "safe" API for screensavers (via .appex) but is only using it internally. 3rd party screensavers must still use the old unsafe API (that uses plugins, so unsafe code). To bridge that gap, Apple made legacyScreenSaver, an .appex that loads the plugin code. It's a great concept in practice, but the implementation has been a mess since macOS 10.15 (Catalina…

Why use power and memory to run a screensaver when you can put the display to sleep?

Screensavers do seem like a relic from the CRT era, but there is probably a fraction of a second difference between waking a display and simply dismissing a screensaver, which I imagine matters to some people.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#163
post #129

Stats + Hidden Bar + Brave are my first 3 downloads on any new Mac

Unfortunate that you mentioned Brave invalidating your previous two suggestions!

Different reaction over here. I've never heard of Stats or Hidden Bar, but as a Brave fan I'm going to go check them out.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#164
post #85
post #46

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.

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!

Thanks for pointing that out. Unfortunately, the option I'd want - memory utilization - doesn't seem to be one of the choices.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apparently it is slopiness in the form of an undocumented API contract breakage. https://github.com/lpar/RedPill/issues/8 (the screensaver I use) https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/10/xscreensaver-6-08-out-now/ (linked from there) Maybe I should submit a PR with this workaround.

Ah in that case I apologize. Truly baffling situation.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#166
post #85
post #46

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.

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!

+1, thank you js2!

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#167
post #6

Windows doesn't have a programmable equivalent does it? Last time I messed around with this stuff I got by with an Electron app and using browser desktop notifications but I think I couldn't actually modify the taskbar/put icons somewhere.

I use XMeters. It's okay. You have a little customization to which meters to display, but it does pretty much everything I'd like it to. Per-core bar graph, memory utilization, and disk and network up/down rates.

The config ui is unbelievably slow with a very early windows 7 aesthetic. But I've seen that screen maybe three times in as many years. It's fine, I guess.

The main.taskbar widget seems perfectly cromulent though. No noticeable impact on system resources, and the updating feels plenty snappy. I'm happy with paying a few bucks for this widget.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when 4 MB 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.

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.

> 5MB RAM/40MB HDD Mac IIvx

That was a top-of-the-line Mac, back then. On a par with a maxed-out Studio.

Re: Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar

#170
post #46

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.

> The activity monitor in my dock set to show CPU is sufficient for my needs.

Another #TIL for Apple hidden features

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