mxtop

Performance monitoring CLI tool for Apple silicon.

mxtop is a maintained fork of asitop that fixes its long-standing bugs and keeps it working on new macOS releases and chips.

pip install mxtop

What is mxtop

A Python-based nvtop-inspired command line tool for Apple silicon (M1 and later) Macs.

• Utilization info:
  • CPU (E-cluster and P-cluster), GPU
  • Frequency and utilization
  • ANE utilization (measured by power)
• Memory info:
  • RAM and swap, size and usage
  • (Apple removed memory bandwidth from powermetrics)
• I/O info:
  • Network throughput (up/down)
  • Disk throughput (read/write)
• Top processes:
  • Heaviest processes by CPU, with their resident memory
• Power info:
  • CPU power, GPU power, and combined CPU+GPU+ANE power (powermetrics no longer reports a true package power)
  • Chart for CPU/GPU power
  • Peak power, rolling average display
  • Thermal throttling state
• System info:
  • WiFi connection
  • Battery level and charger

mxtop uses the built-in powermetrics utility on macOS, which allows access to a variety of hardware performance counters. Note that it requires sudo to run due to powermetrics needing root access to run. mxtop is lightweight and has minimal performance impact.

mxtop works on Apple Silicon Macs (M1 through M4) on macOS Monterey and later.

Installation and Usage

mxtop needs Python 3.11 or later. The python3 bundled with the Xcode Command Line Tools can be older than that, so install a recent Python first (from python.org, Homebrew or uv). Then install mxtop with pip install mxtop, or as an isolated tool with uv tool install mxtop or pipx install mxtop, and run it from the Terminal.

# recommended: enter your password before start
sudo mxtop

# it will prompt for password on start
mxtop

# press q or ESC to quit

# all options
mxtop [-h] [--interval INTERVAL] [--color COLOR] [--avg AVG]
      [--show_cores SHOW_CORES] [--max_count MAX_COUNT] [--top N]
      [--export PATH] [--log-level LOG_LEVEL]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --interval INTERVAL   Display interval and sampling interval for powermetrics (seconds)
  --color COLOR         Choose display color (0-8)
  --avg AVG             Interval for averaged values (seconds)
  --show_cores SHOW_CORES
                        Show individual core utilization. Takes a value:
                        any non-empty value turns it on, including `False`,
                        so pass `--show_cores 1` or leave it out.
  --max_count MAX_COUNT Max samples before restarting powermetrics (0 = unlimited)
  --top N               Number of top CPU processes to display (0 hides the
                        panel, default 5)
  --export PATH         Append every sample to PATH. `.csv` writes a header row
                        plus one row per sample; `.json`, `.jsonl` and `.ndjson`
                        write JSON Lines (one object per line). Rows are flushed
                        as they are written, so the file is readable while mxtop
                        runs and stays complete if the run is interrupted.
  --log-level LOG_LEVEL Log level for messages on stderr (DEBUG, INFO,
                        WARNING, ERROR; default WARNING)

How it works

powermetrics is used to measure the following:

• CPU/GPU utilization via active residency
• CPU/GPU frequency
• CPU/GPU/ANE energy consumption
• Thermal pressure

psutil is used to measure the following:

• memory and swap usage
• network and disk throughput
• top processes by CPU

sysctl is used to measure the following:

• CPU name
• CPU core counts

system_profiler is used to measure the following:

• GPU core count
• WiFi connection
• battery and charger details

pmset is used to measure the following:

• battery level and power source

Some values are hardcoded estimates, because the system does not expose an official source for them:

• CPU/GPU TDP per chip, used to scale the power charts
• ANE max power (8 W for every chip), used to turn ANE power into a utilization percentage

License

MIT, see LICENSE for details.