ProcessBarMonitor

中文说明 / 中文 README

A native macOS menu bar monitor for CPU, memory, thermal state, and top apps.

Download

• Latest release

Why this app

ProcessBarMonitor gives you a compact Activity Monitor-style summary without keeping a full window open. It lives in the macOS menu bar and focuses on the system signals you usually want at a glance: CPU load, memory pressure, thermal state, and which apps are currently eating resources.

Highlights

• Live menu bar summary for CPU, memory, and thermal state
• Top apps by CPU and memory in one click
• Search and adjustable process row count
• Launch at login support
• Best-effort CPU temperature integration when helper tools are available
• Native Swift / SwiftUI macOS app

Good fit for

• keeping an eye on system load while working
• quickly spotting which app just spiked CPU or memory
• checking thermal state on laptops without opening Activity Monitor
• lightweight menu bar monitoring on Apple silicon Macs

Features

• Menu bar utility with live summary in the menu bar title
• Overall CPU usage
• Memory pressure (system-wide active + inactive + wired + compressor)
• Thermal state (Nominal / Fair / Serious / Critical)
• Top apps by CPU
• Top apps by memory
• Manual refresh + automatic refresh
• Best-effort CPU temperature support
• Search box for filtering by app name / path / PID / bundle id
• Adjustable process row count
• Persisted display preferences for menu bar mode, temperature mode, and row count
• Quit button in the panel

Installation

Download a packaged app

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases and unzip ProcessBarMonitor.app.

Install locally from this repo

./install_app.sh

Development

Open the project in Xcode and run it there, or use the included helper scripts.

Build an app bundle locally:

./build_app.sh

CI

GitHub Actions now builds the Swift package and app bundle automatically on pushes, pull requests, and version tags.

Notes on CPU temperature

macOS does not expose CPU temperature through a stable public API for normal apps. This app therefore:

• tries to read temperature from installed helper tools such as osx-cpu-temp or istats
• on Apple Silicon: reads HID sensors first, falls back to helper tools
• shows an actionable hint (e.g. install hint on Intel, permission check on Apple Silicon) when temperature is unavailable — no silent --
• does not require sudo or private entitlements

Known limitations

• CPU temperature is best-effort rather than guaranteed
• Process sampling can still be relatively expensive on some systems
• The app is still being polished for wider public release

Roadmap ideas

• Per-process actions (e.g. kill, priority adjustment)
• Better sensor integrations
• Further performance tuning

Maintainer notes

Release workflow is documented in RELEASING.md.