The Activity Monitor alternative for Mac.
TidyByte Monitor is a free Mac system monitor that shows apps, not processes: per-app CPU, memory, disk, network, and energy, a year of history stored on your Mac, alerts, and dashboards for dev servers, coding agents, and Docker containers. Nothing it records ever leaves your Mac.
Free · MIT open source · macOS 26 or later · Apple silicon · Part of TidyByte for Mac
One row per app, not one row per process.
A busy Mac runs hundreds of processes for the few dozen apps you actually opened. The Monitor groups helpers under the app that started them, so the flat process list becomes app rows you can judge, with the apps you opened at the top.
The whole app, summed
CPU, memory, disk, network, and energy for each app, counted across everything it runs — helpers, services, and extensions included. Chrome costs what Chrome costs, all of it on one row.
The process view stays one click away
The Process Inspector opens a process and shows its code signature and Team ID, sandbox status, parent and child processes, command line, open files, and listening ports.
Actions ask first
Quit and Force Quit live in the Inspector, and each confirms before it runs. The Monitor watches everything and changes nothing on its own.
Thirteen dashboards cover the whole machine.
Each dashboard answers one question in plain numbers. Ten of them watch the hardware; Projects, Agents, and Containers get their own sections below.
- Overview
- The state of the Mac on one screen: the big numbers and the busiest apps.
- CPU
- Per-app and total utilization, so a runaway tab cannot hide.
- Memory
- What each app holds and how hard the system is working to keep up.
- Disk
- Reads and writes per app, not just one total for the whole machine.
- Network
- Traffic per app, so you can see what is moving and when.
- GPU
- Utilization for whatever is drawing, rendering, or computing.
- Neural
- Neural Engine activity, where the Mac exposes it.
- Battery
- Level, wattage in and out, battery health, and what is keeping the Mac awake.
- Sound
- Output volume and mute, a live badge when an app uses the microphone, and which apps are audible right now.
- Bluetooth
- Battery levels for the accessories that report them.
Temperature and fan readings appear alongside the hardware dashboards where macOS lets an app read the sensors — TidyByte shows what macOS reports and invents nothing where it does not.
Live from the menu bar, remembered for a year.
Watching should not mean keeping a window open, and noticing a problem should not require having stared at the right graph at the right moment.
One item per metric
CPU, memory, network, disk, and energy each get a live menu bar item, plus a combined panel that lists the busiest apps. Read the number; open the panel when the number looks wrong.
History you can query
Every metric, per app, is recorded for up to a year — raw samples plus hourly rollups in a local SQLite database. Next Tuesday’s slowdown can be compared against last Tuesday’s baseline.
Alerts for what stays wrong
The Monitor can watch for sustained high CPU, unusually fast memory growth, and heavy disk or network use, and send a macOS notification when a condition holds. It notifies; it never acts for you.
Built for people who run things on purpose.
A development Mac is not just apps — it is servers, agents, and containers. The Monitor gives each its own view instead of burying them in a process list.
- Projects
- Dev servers and the ports they hold, grouped by project folder. Servers that have gone idle are flagged, so port 3000 stops being a mystery.
- Agents
- Command-line coding assistants — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, Copilot, Aider, and others — as first-class rows with their project, their child processes, and the plan usage known locally.
- Containers
- Docker containers with CPU, memory, network, and ports, side by side with the apps and agents on the same machine.
Activity Monitor and TidyByte Monitor
Activity Monitor is free, built into macOS, and good at what it shows: every process, live. Keep it. The Monitor starts where it stops — it groups those processes by app, remembers what it saw, and adds views for the things developers run.
| What you want to know | Activity Monitor (built in) | TidyByte Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| Processes | Every process, live. | Apps first: helpers grouped under the parent app, with the full process list one click away. |
| History | None — what you see is now. | Every metric, per app, up to a year, in a local database. |
| Alerts | None. | Notifications for sustained CPU, memory growth, and heavy disk or network use. |
| Menu bar | Not a menu bar item. | One live item per metric, plus a combined panel with the busiest apps. |
| Dev servers and ports | Ports, via the command line. | A Projects view: servers and ports grouped by project folder, idle servers flagged. |
| Coding agents | Shown as anonymous processes. | Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, Copilot, Aider and more, with project and plan usage. |
| Docker containers | Shown as processes. | A Containers view with CPU, memory, network, and ports. |
| Price | Free, included with macOS. | Free, MIT licensed, part of TidyByte for Mac. |
How to use TidyByte Monitor.
Four steps from download to a live number in your menu bar.
-
Download and open TidyByte
Get the disk image from GitHub and drag TidyByte to Applications. It is signed and notarized, and it updates itself.
-
Click Monitor in the sidebar
The cleaner and the monitor share one app. Monitor opens on Overview, with the busiest apps on top.
-
Read the dashboards
Thirteen views, from CPU to Containers. Each row is an app, so the overview number drills down to the process causing it.
-
Watch it from the menu bar
Give each metric a live menu bar item — CPU, memory, network, disk, energy — and let alerts flag whatever stays wrong.
Export any view, script anything, ask an assistant.
The same readings work in three registers: a picture for a bug report, a command for a script, and tools for a local AI assistant.
PNG export
Any view exports as a PNG — attach it to an issue, send it to a colleague, or keep the before-and-after.
A CLI for the terminal
tidybyte monitor status|top|ports|agents|limits answers the common questions straight from the shell, printing a table or JSON.
MCP tools for assistants
The app ships MCP tools, so a local AI assistant can query live readings on your behalf. The queries run on your Mac, like everything else.
Questions
Is TidyByte's monitor free?
Yes. The monitor ships inside TidyByte for Mac, which is free and open source under the MIT license — no ads, no accounts, no subscriptions.
How is this different from Activity Monitor?
Activity Monitor is free, built into macOS, and lists every process live. TidyByte's monitor groups helpers under the app that owns them, keeps per-app history for up to a year, sends alerts, adds menu bar items, and tracks dev servers, coding agents, and Docker containers.
Does the monitor slow my Mac down?
It reads the standard measurements macOS exposes to any app, and history is written to a local SQLite database on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded. The menu bar items mean you can keep an eye on one number without keeping the window open.
Where is the history stored?
On your Mac, in a local SQLite database: raw samples plus hourly rollups, per app, for up to a year. Nothing syncs anywhere — there is no account and no server.
Does it work on Intel Macs?
No. TidyByte for Mac requires macOS 26 or later on a Mac with Apple silicon, and the monitor is part of that app.
Can AI assistants read my system stats?
Only assistants you connect yourself. On its own, the monitor talks to nothing — no cloud, no analytics, no network. An assistant connected through MCP reads live readings locally, on your machine.
What do the alerts cover?
Sustained high CPU, unusually fast memory growth, and heavy disk or network activity. Alerts arrive as normal macOS notifications; the Monitor never acts on them for you.
Which coding agents can TidyByte Monitor see?
The common command-line assistants: Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor Agent, GitHub Copilot, Aider, and others. Each shows up as a row with its project, its child processes, and its resource use.
Does it show AI plan usage?
Where an agent reports its plan locally, yes — the Monitor shows the usage the agent itself exposes on your Mac. Nothing is fetched from an account or over the network to get it.
How does it know which project a dev server belongs to?
Dev servers are grouped by the project folder they were started from, and each server’s open ports are listed with it. Servers that have gone idle are flagged rather than dropped.
Can I query it from the terminal or an AI assistant (CLI/MCP)?
Yes, both. The tidybyte CLI answers from the shell — monitor status, top, ports, agents, limits — as a table or JSON, and MCP tools let a local AI assistant query live readings. Both run on your Mac.
Does anything about my projects leave my Mac?
No. Projects, agents, and containers are read and recorded locally, in the same on-disk database as every other metric. There is no account, no sync, and no telemetry.
Can it change anything on my Mac?
Only what you ask. The Monitor watches and records; the one place it takes an action is the Process Inspector, where Quit and Force Quit each confirm before they run.
Can I export or share what I see?
Any view exports as a PNG — ready to drop into a bug report, an issue, or a message.
How do I get it?
TidyByte for Mac is a direct download: a signed and notarized disk image from the GitHub releases page. Install it once and it updates itself.
Read it with an assistant.
Each link opens your AI assistant with one prefilled request — summarize this page. What comes back is the assistant’s own reading, so check it against the page.
Part of TidyByte for Mac.
The monitor ships alongside the cleaner — caches, developer files, duplicates, and app leftovers, under the same ask-first rules. Nothing recorded ever leaves your Mac, as the privacy policy spells out, and every release is listed in the changelog.