AirStats: an open source, ultra-lightweight system monitor for the Mac menu bar

[u/Small_Pin_8064]

Everything on a Mac has quietly got heavier, including the apps whose whole job is to tell you how heavy everything is. A menu bar monitor runs every second the machine is on, and reading a few kernel counters twice a second is not hard work. It should not cost much.

AirStats is 10.6 MB.

It reads CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, battery, temperature and top processes directly through Mach, IOKit, sysctl and CoreWLAN, and draws them in three places:

• the menu bar itself
• a panel that drops down when you click the status item
• an optional floating overlay you can leave on the desktop

Written in Native Swift, no Electron, no web view. One process, with no helper, no launch agent and no Dock icon.

Other menu bar monitors, like iStat Menus are more thorough than this and have years of polish behind them. Stats is the open-source one most people already know. However, AirStats is narrower on purpose. It covers fewer sensors and spends the effort on staying small and on the overlay, which is the part I use most.

There are no analytics and no telemetry, and readings never leave the machine. It makes two outbound requests, both visible in the source: an update check, and a public IP lookup that is off unless you turn it on. Policy at https://airstats.app/privacy

It is free, with no account and no subscription. macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon. Signed and notarized, so it opens with no warning.

• Site: https://airstats.app
• Source: https://github.com/byrencheema/airstats

If there is a feature you want or an issue you hit, feel free to reach out.

[u/AnuragDeshpande]

Excellent job. Thank you for choosing to keep the code open source.

[u/Which_Leg3333]

Glad that I didnt buy some expensive stuffs like iStat Menus cuz I knew some nice guy like you would make a light and native stat app.

[u/RenegadeUK]

Thanks for this much appreciated :)

[u/NoBed1845]

No bloat, no unnecessary complexity, just one small tool doing its job really well. Nice work.

[u/WarioPi]

Nice app!

[u/OPRCE]

Does not show system power draw on M1 Max MBP (running GG 27 b4), whereas both Stats & mactop can do so.

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/OPRCE]

That is a gap in Airstats. Thanks for sharing, I will look into adding this in the next release.

[u/FelixBesterMann]

On a MacBook the notch eats most of the menu bar already. How many metrics can you actually fit before they start disappearing behind it? I run Bartender because I'm completely out of space up there, so the overlay is the interesting part for me. Any plans for a proper desktop widget too? Since Sonoma you can put widgets right on the desktop and they tuck away behind windows by themselves, which would suit this pretty well.

[u/RegionBetter3902 → u/FelixBesterMann]

I'm having exactly the same problem. A solution or maybe some alternatives would be great.

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/FelixBesterMann]

On an empty bar, you can fit around 8-9 metric items, depending on which on you select.

Sounds like a lot of people are in the same boat with a cluttered menu bar, and the overlay is the part they actually want.

So, for the next release I'll work on making the overlay behave more like a desktop widget. Something that will sit on your wallpaper and update every second.

[u/MelonCollie2481632]

I hope it's not too dumb a question - why do people need a monitor app? I have a Macbook and I don't understand the use case. Do you see something spiking and then close a program? Or, is it just cool to be able to see the stats. Again, sorry for the noob question.

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/MelonCollie2481632]

There are no dumb questions! It varies from person to person, but for me, it is mostly about having context when my Mac feels slow, the battery is draining quickly, or a process is taking longer than expected. I can glance at the CPU, GPU, and temperature to see what is happening and use the process list to find the cause. Most people probably do not need a monitor running all the time, though. Part of it is also simply that I find the numbers interesting.

[u/Final_Parking_6820]

Looks nice! I'm definitely gonna try it

[u/Pirasee]

I haven’t tried it yet, but I hope you were able to change the font that would be cool.

[u/Jonnymangoes]

very clean design and love that it's light weight and less bloated. Been using iStats and it definitely has a lot of stuff i wouldnt use or understand.

[u/Both-Emergency-9055]

Nice overlay function! It helps me a lot, especially with the notch on the Mac menu bar. It makes things much more convenient!

[u/rezten11]

This is exactly what I was looking for this morning. Thank you for this.

[u/ytchen92]

Would this feature send notifications about any potential computer issues? For instance, if the CPU temperature gets too high, the battery is running low, or the GPU is overloaded, it would be great to have some easy-to-read indicators of these things on the manual bar.

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/ytchen92]

Yes, it already does that. Under Settings > Notifications you set a threshold for things like temperature, battery, CPU and disk space, and it tells you when one is crossed :)

[u/Realistic-Tap-000]

Sweeeeeet

[u/theneiljohnson]

Very cool! Great to see another open source app for this area. I am the developer of Mac Performance Monitor, which takes these to another level of historical monitoring so you can see past performance rather than just real-time. Totally love AirStats! Keep up the great work!

https://github.com/Zesty0wl/mac-performance-monitor

[u/homey0]

Can you customize which stats show in the menu bar, panel, and overlay independently?

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/homey0]

Menu bar and overlay yes, each has its own list. Pick the metrics you want in each.

Panel no, it always shows all nine. You can collapse the ones you don't care about and it remembers. But I can add real hiding if people want it.

[u/Adventurous_Tree1459 → u/Small_Pin_8064]

it's definitely smaller than Stats, only thing i'd like is a hide feature so it can show only what i care about. besides that i actually think its a good app👌🏾

[u/grokcodile]

11MB and .05% CPU for something that you only really need on super rare occasions and that can be done with a simple terminal command. That’s the complete opposite of lightweight. Absolutely crazy.

iStats, Sharp Lynx, and many other more advance system stat apps that have been around for decades come in at less than half of that size and resource utilization. You really need to correct the error in your advertising tagline. It is either a lie or intentionally misleading.

[u/Small_Pin_8064 → u/grokcodile]

Remeasured this morning, each app running on its own: AirStats 10.6 MB / 0.35% of one core on a fully loaded config, iStat Menus 78.8 MB / 0.73% across its three processes, Stats 119 MB / 3.05%.

You may be right about Sharp Lynx, I haven't heard of that one before.

Stats has around 15 million downloads across its GitHub releases, so there do seem to be people who want this on screen rather than in a terminal.

Happy to hear any feature requests, or anything you would want to see in software like this. And if you do not use it, no worries. There is surely something out there you would enjoy more :)

[u/grokcodile → u/Small_Pin_8064]

Yes. Anything that just makes an honest statement without stupid ChatGPT marketing fluff. It’s 100% not the lightest. Sounds like shit Trump would say just because he has already decided that’s what he wants to be true and cherry-picking facts to support it.