Geek Posted June 24, 2011 Posted June 24, 2011 <div class="KonaBody"><p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/system-activity-mac-menubar.jpg" alt="Show System Activity in the Mac OS X Menu Bar" title="system-activity-mac-menubar" width="619" height="119" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-17866" /></p> <p>You can display and monitor virtually all essential system activity directly from your <a href="http://osxdaily.com/category/mac-os-x/">Mac OS X</a> menu bar using a great utility called iStat Menu:</p> <ul> <li>CPU usage</li> <li>Memory use</li> <li>Disk capacity</li> <li>Disk activity and I/O</li> <li>Temperatures of CPU, battery, heatsinks, memory, hard drives, and more</li> <li>Network activity and bandwidth usage</li> <li>Calendar and time</li> </ul> <p>Everything is really customizable so you can change the width, colors, and what and how things are displayed in the menu bar by tweaking settings in the iStat Menus Preference pane. For my uses, I show Disk IO, CPU activity, and bandwidth usage, but if you want to see everything going down on your Mac you can do that too.</p> <p>Now here’s a little secret, iStat Menus used to be a free utility but apparently a third party bought the rights to the app, changed a thing or two, called it iStats Menu 3.0, and started charging $16 for it, but <em>you can still download the free version from third parties</em>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tucows.com/preview/607624" target="_blank">Download the free version 2.0 from TuCows</a></p> <p> I tried out the new paid version and other than the menus being a different color now I couldn’t find any difference worth paying for, so I’d say just get the free 2.0 while it’s still floating around on the web. You may think differently, so feel free to chuck $16 at the new owner for the newest version too.</p> <p>Here’s a look at the settings panel within System Preferences: <span id="more-17864"></span> <img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/istats-options.jpg" alt="iStats preferences and options" title="istats-options" width="620" height="551" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-17867" /></p> <p>I much prefer this method to just showing CPU load <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2007/02/12/quick-system-stats-monitor-in-your-dock/">in the Dock</a> with <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/15/mac-task-manager/">Activity Monitor</a>. One because it’s a smaller footprint, two it’s easier to spot more detail at the top of your screen, and three because you can pull down the menu options and see even more information about whatever it is you’re monitoring. </p> <p>This is what the bandwidth monitor looks like when you click on the menubar item, it shows incoming and outgoing data, peak speeds, your IP, network location, and you can also access other network utilities from the pulldown menu. </p> <p><img src="http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/menubar-istats-bandwidth.jpg" alt="Get detailed bandwidth information from iStats bandwidth monitor" title="menubar-istats-bandwidth" width="219" height="360" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-17868" /></p> <p>This kind of detailed information is available for each aspect of your system that you are monitoring. Pulling down the CPU menu will show you the top processes, load average, uptime, and more. Disk Activity will display a chart of reads and writes for each drive, etc.</p> <p> My only complaint is that the Memory monitor portion doesn’t show swap usage in the menubar, but considering you can usually feel and see swap usage (the spinning beach ball of death), it’s not that big of a deal. On the topic of RAM, if you are hitting virtual memory too often I suggest you <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/10/29/does-your-mac-need-more-memory-how-to-know-if-you-need-a-ram-upgrade/">check to see if your Mac needs a RAM upgrade</a>, RAM is so cheap these days and makes a <a href="http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/17/macbook-pro-8gb-ram-upgrade-review/">big difference</a> in system performance so it’s hard to not justify the minimal expense to max it out.</p> <p>All in all this is a great free app that is quickly disappearing from the web, so if you like to keep an eye on how your Mac handles it’s resources, grab iStats Menu 2.0 for free before it’s gone.</p> </div> <p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/J_TWNn0mMyiok9W9lmKAkkOVoak/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/J_TWNn0mMyiok9W9lmKAkkOVoak/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/> <a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/J_TWNn0mMyiok9W9lmKAkkOVoak/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/J_TWNn0mMyiok9W9lmKAkkOVoak/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?i=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?a=e_ru4iI6VRw:e9wTnK0PAm0:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/osxdaily?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/osxdaily/~4/e_ru4iI6VRw" height="1" width="1"/> View the full article
duff Posted June 30, 2011 Posted June 30, 2011 thanks for information, but I prefer to use ProteMac Meter ( www.protemac.com )
miniklop Posted July 1, 2011 Posted July 1, 2011 thanks for information, but I prefer to use ProteMac Meter ( www.protemac.com ) use use this program too for several months and really liked it.
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