A beautiful, real-time system monitoring dashboard for macOS
Features • Installation • Usage • Screenshots • Contributing
PowerMetrics TUI transforms macOS's powerful powermetrics utility into an intuitive, interactive terminal dashboard. Monitor your system's performance, power consumption, and thermal state with a beautiful interface that makes complex metrics accessible to everyone.
Perfect for developers, power users, and anyone curious about their Mac's performance characteristics.
TOP PROCESSES (142 active, 4 exited)
PID Process CPU% Memory Disk Network CPU Hist Mem Hist
12345 Xcode 45.2% 2.3 GB 12 MB/s 0.5 MB/s ████▇▆▅▄ ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅
23456 Chrome Helper (Renderer) 23.4% 892 MB 0 MB/s 2.1 MB/s ▃▄▅▆▇███ ▆▆▆▇▇▇▇▇
34567 kernel_task 18.9% 1.2 GB 34 MB/s 0 MB/s ▂▃▄▅▄▃▂▁ ████████
45678 Spotify 12.3% 445 MB 0 MB/s 0.3 MB/s ▅▆▇▆▅▄▃▄ ▃▃▃▃▃▃▃▃
RECENTLY EXITED PROCESSES (showing 4 of 4)
Process Occurrences Last Seen
swift build 3x 2m ago
clang++ 5x 5m ago
node 2x 8m ago
python3 1x 12m ago
CPU0 (E): IPI: 234/s Timer: 890/s Total: 1124/s ██████░░░░ ▃▄▅▆▇▆▅▄▃▂
CPU1 (E): IPI: 156/s Timer: 823/s Total: 979/s █████░░░░░ ▂▃▄▅▄▃▂▁▂▃
CPU4 (P): IPI: 1823/s Timer: 1234/s Total: 3057/s ████████░░ ▇█████▇▆▅▄ ⚠️
CPU5 (P): IPI: 2156/s Timer: 1456/s Total: 3612/s █████████░ ████████▇▆ 🔴
POWER CONSUMPTION THERMAL STATUS
CPU: 15.2W ████████████░░░░ 68% Thermal Pressure: Fair ⚠️
GPU: 4.9W ████░░░░░░░░░░░░ 27% CPU P-Core: 78.3°C ████████░░ Warning
ANE: 0.3W █░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 3% GPU: 71.2°C ███████░░░ Elevated
DRAM: 1.8W ███░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 10% Fan: 4200 RPM (65% max)
- Per-CPU Interrupt Breakdown: See IPI, Timer, and Total interrupts for each individual CPU core with historical sparklines
- Dynamic CPU Frequency Scaling: Real-time frequency monitoring for each E-core and P-core with auto-scaling graphs
- GPU Frequency Monitoring: Persistent GPU frequency display with history sparkline (shows idle state)
- Power Analytics: Monitor CPU, GPU, ANE (Neural Engine), and DRAM power consumption in real-time
- Thermal Management: View temperature sensors and thermal pressure states (Nominal, Fair, Serious, Critical)
- Battery Intelligence: Track charge levels with fixed-range sparkline (0-100%) for accurate visualization
- Process Insights:
- Top processes by CPU usage with individual sparklines showing historical trends
- Recently Exited Processes: Track processes that have terminated in the last 5 minutes
- Shows max CPU%, average CPU%, peak memory usage, and how long ago the process exited
- Perfect for monitoring build tools, scripts, and temporary processes
- I/O Statistics: Monitor network (in/out MB/s) and disk (read/write MB/s) activity with live graphs
- Memory Usage: Track RAM and swap utilization with pressure indicators
- 10 Specialized Views: Each metric category has its own optimized display
- Real-time Visualizations:
- Live-updating bar charts that auto-scale to your hardware's capabilities
- Sparkline graphs showing trends for the last 30-120 samples
- Per-process CPU and memory history sparklines
- Per-core frequency history visualization
- Smart Color Coding:
- 🔴 Red: Critical/High usage (>80% CPU, >2000 interrupts/s, >50% power)
- 🟡 Yellow: Moderate usage (50-80% CPU, 1000-2000 interrupts/s)
- 🟢 Green: Normal usage (<50% CPU, <1000 interrupts/s)
- 🔵 Blue: Efficiency cores, network input, memory usage
- Responsive Design: Automatically adjusts to terminal size, showing more processes on larger screens
- Help System: Built-in descriptions for technical terms (toggle with 'h')
- Quick Navigation:
- Number keys (1-9, 0) for instant view switching
- Tab/Shift+Tab or Arrow keys for sequential navigation
- Cross-Architecture:
- Apple Silicon: Distinguishes E-cores (Efficiency) and P-cores (Performance)
- Intel Macs: Shows all CPU cores with appropriate frequency ranges
- Auto-Detection: Intelligently adapts to your Mac's capabilities and maximum frequencies
- macOS (any version with
powermetricsutility) - Go 1.21 or later
- Terminal with UTF-8 support
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/sderosiaux/powermetrics-tui.git
cd powermetrics-tui
# Build the application
go build -o powermetrics-tui
# Make it globally accessible (optional)
sudo cp powermetrics-tui /usr/local/bin/go install github.com/sderosiaux/powermetrics-tui@latest# Authenticate sudo (required for powermetrics)
sudo -v
# Launch with all metrics
powermetrics-tui
# Or specify specific metrics
powermetrics-tui --samplers cpu_power,gpu_power,thermal| Key | Action |
|---|---|
1-9, 0 |
Jump directly to specific views |
Tab |
Cycle through views |
h or ? |
Toggle help descriptions |
q |
Quit application |
- Interrupts - CPU interrupt statistics with per-core IPI/Timer breakdown
- Power - Power consumption metrics (CPU/GPU/ANE/DRAM)
- Frequency - CPU/GPU clock speeds with historical sparklines
- Processes - Top processes with CPU/memory history sparklines
- Network - Network I/O statistics with throughput graphs
- Disk - Disk I/O statistics with read/write monitoring
- Thermal - Temperature and thermal pressure monitoring
- Battery - Battery status, health, and charging metrics
- System - Overall system metrics and resource usage
- Combined - All metrics in one comprehensive view
powermetrics-tui [options]
Options:
--samplers Comma-separated list of samplers (default: all)
Options: interrupts, cpu_power, gpu_power, thermal, battery
--interval Sampling interval in milliseconds (default: 1000)
--combined Start in combined view mode
--debug Enable debug output# Monitor CPU throttling under load
powermetrics-tui --samplers cpu_power,thermal,frequency
# Watch for thermal throttling during intensive tasks
# View shows: Thermal Pressure (Nominal → Fair → Serious → Critical)
# CPU frequencies will drop when thermal limits are reached# Track power consumption while on battery
powermetrics-tui --samplers battery,cpu_power,gpu_power
# Identify power-hungry processes
# Switch to Processes view (4) to see CPU% with historical trends
# High CPU sparklines (████████) indicate consistent high usage# Monitor GPU and CPU performance during gaming
powermetrics-tui --samplers gpu_power,frequency,thermal
# GPU power spikes indicate graphics-intensive operations
# P-core frequencies show performance core utilization
# Thermal view reveals if throttling is affecting FPS# Monitor system impact during builds/compilation
powermetrics-tui --interval 500 # Faster sampling for quick changes
# Example during Xcode build:
# - E-cores: 2100-2400 MHz (background indexing)
# - P-cores: 3800-4200 MHz (active compilation)
# - Power: 15-25W CPU, 5-10W GPU
# - Processes: clang/swift showing high CPU% with rising sparklines# Investigate high interrupt rates (kernel issues)
powermetrics-tui
# Switch to Interrupts view (1)
# Look for:
# - IPI > 2000/s per CPU (red) indicates excessive inter-core communication
# - Timer > 1500/s (yellow) suggests timer coalescing issues
# - Uneven distribution across cores points to IRQ affinity problems-
Apple Silicon: Full support for M1, M2, M3 series
- Efficiency cores (E-cores) and Performance cores (P-cores) tracking
- ANE (Apple Neural Engine) power monitoring
- Unified memory architecture metrics
-
Intel Macs: Complete compatibility
- Traditional CPU frequency scaling
- Turbo Boost monitoring
- Discrete GPU tracking (if available)
PowerMetrics TUI leverages macOS's native powermetrics utility, providing:
- Hardware-level accuracy
- Minimal performance overhead
- Real-time sampling capabilities
- Access to exclusive Apple Silicon metrics
Contributions are welcome! Whether it's:
- 🐛 Bug reports
- 💡 Feature suggestions
- 📖 Documentation improvements
- 🔧 Code contributions
Please feel free to:
- Fork the repository
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin feature/AmazingFeature) - Open a Pull Request
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
- Built with tcell - Excellent terminal UI library for Go
- Powered by macOS
powermetrics- Apple's powerful system monitoring utility - Inspired by tools like
htop,btop, andvtop
Made with ❤️ for the macOS community