Overview

macmon is a sudoless performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple Silicon processors.

macmon preview

Motivation

Apple Silicon processors don't provide a straightforward way to view live power consumption and other performance metrics. While tools like asitop exist, they often require root privileges by reading data from powermetrics.

macmon addresses this by using a private macOS API to gather similar metrics, but it runs entirely without sudo. This makes it a lightweight, secure, and convenient tool for developers, especially those testing performance-intensive applications like local LLM models.

Key Features

  • 🚫 Sudo-less Operation: Runs without requiring root privileges, enhancing security and ease of use.
  • ⚡ Real-time Metrics: Monitors CPU, GPU, and ANE (Apple Neural Engine) power usage in real-time.
  • 📊 Detailed Utilization: Displays CPU utilization per cluster (E-cores and P-cores) along with current frequency.
  • 💾 Memory Monitoring: Tracks both RAM and Swap usage.
  • 📈 Historical Charts: Visualizes recent performance data with average and maximum values for key metrics.
  • 🌡️ Temperature Sensing: Shows the average temperature for the CPU and GPU.
  • 🎨 Customizable Themes: Includes 6 switchable color themes to match your terminal aesthetic.
  • 🪟 Flexible Views: Switch between a compact Gauge view and a historical Sparkline view.
  • 🦀 Built with Rust: Ensures high performance and reliability.

Next Steps