The  Activity Monitor
alternative for Mac

Activity Monitor lists processes, about a thousand on a working Mac. Vitals lists apps. Every helper is added to the app that launched it, so each app has one figure for memory, CPU, energy, disk and network. Vitals also keeps up to a year of history, sends a notification when an app misbehaves, lives in the menu bar, finds dev servers left running, shows your coding agents and what is left of your AI plans, and answers Claude, Codex and Cursor over MCP.

For everyday questions, yes: what is using the memory, what is draining the battery or keeping the Mac awake, and what is slowing it down. You can quit or force quit an app or a single process from Vitals. Activity Monitor still has a few specialist tools, such as sampling a process, that Vitals does not copy.

Click any process in Vitals, or the info button beside it in an app’s drawer, and the Process Inspector opens on it. It shows the app the process belongs to; its code signature, with the Team ID, hardened runtime and sandbox; its parent process, launch agent and full command line; and its use since it started: CPU time split into user and system, memory against its peak, open files, disk and network, and its child processes. An app adds its version, bundle ID and Info.plist. Copy it, save it as a CSV file, or get the same in Terminal with vitals process.

Yes, once you turn on Show Usage Limits of Your AI Plans in Settings → Integrations. The Agents tab shows how much is left of the week, the 5-hour session and a model’s own limit, when each resets and whether you are on pace. It covers Claude, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Antigravity, Grok, Ollama and OpenCode, for every account signed in on this Mac. It also counts the tokens Claude Code and Codex used today and this week, and the menu bar can show what is left. It asks each tool’s maker with the sign-in already on this Mac, the way the tool does itself, and sends nothing else.

Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Aider, OpenCode, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Kiro and Goose. Each running session shows its project, whether it is working or waiting for you, and everything it started: dev servers, browsers and tool servers. Quit a session and everything it started, together.

Yes, with the vitals command. vitals status, vitals top, vitals ports, vitals agents and vitals limits give the same answers as the window, as a table or as JSON for scripts. Turn it on in Settings → Integrations, or install the app and the command together with Homebrew: brew install --cask foredotstudio/tap/vitals.

If Homebrew says there is already an app at /Applications/Vitals.app, that copy came from somewhere else, such as the download page, and Homebrew won’t replace it. Run brew update, then brew install --cask --force foredotstudio/tap/vitals, and Homebrew takes it over. Your settings and license stay as they are, and Vitals keeps updating itself.

With no window open it samples every five seconds and uses about a tenth of a percent of one core. It samples faster only while you are looking at it.

macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Power and temperature figures are most detailed on Apple silicon.

Vitals is in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, Ukrainian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, in the words your Mac already uses. It follows your Mac’s language. To use another one for Vitals only, add Vitals under Applications in System Settings → General → Language & Region.

Yes. Every readout can be its own menu bar item, a value, a graph or both, and you ⌘-drag them into any order. The dropdown and the window are yours to arrange too: choose the tabs, and show, hide or reorder the sections on each. Settings → Customize holds the chart colors, the font and weight of the numbers, and the spacing.

Both, if you like. It is always in the menu bar. Turn on Show in Dock and it stays in the Dock like Activity Monitor; opened by hand it shows its window, and at login it stays in the menu bar.

Two ways to buy, both one payment. Lifetime, with every update for life, is $39 for one Mac at the regular price. The launch price started at $5 for the first 1,000 licenses and rises in steps as they sell, up to the regular $39. The pricing card shows the price today, how many are left at it, and what it goes to next. The count comes from our licensing server, so it is the real number. A year of updates is $9 for one Mac. Vitals with our two other apps, Flit and Levers, is $49 for all three.

With Lifetime, no: every update is included for life, with no paid upgrades and nothing to renew. With a year of updates, you get every version released in the next twelve months, and the app keeps working after that for as long as you like. Only a version released after your year needs a renewal, and renewing is your choice.

Nothing, unless you want a newer version. The license never expires: the version you have keeps working, and the app stops offering versions released after your year. If you install one by hand, it tells you the year has ended and points you back to the last version your license includes. Renew whenever you want to move on.

No. Prices are before tax. Where your country charges VAT, GST or sales tax, Paddle adds it at checkout and passes it on to your tax office.

Our two other Mac apps. Flit is dictation that never leaves your Mac: speak, and the words appear wherever you type. Levers hides the desktop, the Dock and menu bar icons before you record your screen, and puts them back in one click. Fore Plus is $49 for Vitals, Flit and Levers on one key. Fore Insider is $99 for those and every app we release later. Each covers one Mac for each app, with every update for life.

The roadmap at vitalsmac.com/roadmap lists it in order: a storage map of what takes your disk space; safe cleanup of caches and old build files; the health of your drives; disk activity for each connected drive; and Mac Health, one line on how your Mac is doing. It also says what comes later and what was asked for and won’t be built. There are no dates. A lifetime license includes all of it, and a year of updates includes what ships during the year.

As many as you pay for. One license covers one Mac. For more, pick a pack of 2, 5, 10 or 25 Macs on the pricing card. You get one license key that works on that many Macs, and each Mac costs less as the pack gets bigger: $25 for 2, down to about $8 a Mac in the pack of 25. Move a license to a new Mac whenever you like, with no account and no email to support.

Buy Vitals, post about it on X, Threads, Reels, TikTok or Shorts, and email us the link. At 5,000 views we refund half of what you paid, and at 20,000 views we refund all of it. On X and Threads it takes 10,000 and 50,000 views. You keep your license. The cash back page has the rules.

Yes, half price, for students, teachers and school staff. Email [email protected] from your school email address and we reply with a one-use code for one Mac. The details are at vitalsmac.com/education.

Yes, 3 days with every feature, and no account or card. Download Vitals and choose Try Free when it opens. After you buy, there is still a 14-day refund.

The download link is on the page you land on after checkout. Your license key arrives by email within a minute. If you lose either, enter your key on the download page to get the link again.

The App Store sandbox stops an app from reading other apps' processes, which is the one thing an activity monitor has to do. Vitals is signed with our Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens like any other app.

Nothing about what you run. Your apps, your history and your project names stay on the Mac. Vitals goes online only to check for updates and to check your license. Activating sends the key, the Mac's name and an anonymous ID, so you can tell your Macs apart when you move a license.

macOS only lets an app read your own processes. To include the system's, you can enable a small helper. It answers one question, how much these processes are using, takes no commands, changes nothing, and quits when Vitals closes. Vitals works without it.

No. It only quits an app, a process or a dev server when you ask, and it shows a confirmation first.