Guides/Vitals vs AgentNotch
Vitals vs AgentNotch
Quick answer
AgentNotch and Vitals both watch your coding agents and what is left of your AI plans. AgentNotch shows them in the notch, where you can approve a request. Vitals goes deeper: whether you are on pace for each limit, the tokens used, what each agent started, and the rest of the Mac with up to a year of history. Choose AgentNotch to answer agents from the notch; choose Vitals to see what your agents use and what your plans have left.
VitalsAgentNotch Choose Vitals if
- You want to see what your agents started and what it costs your Mac
- You want your AI plans in depth: pace, tokens and every account
- You want an Activity Monitor replacement with your AI plans in it
- You want to quit a session and everything it started, together
Choose AgentNotch if
- You want to approve agents’ requests from the notch
- You want a sound when an agent finishes or needs you
- You use Kimi, Pi or LM Studio
Where Vitals pulls ahead
What your agents start, and what it costs
AgentNotch shows each agent’s status. Vitals also lists the dev servers, browsers and tool servers each session started, with their memory and CPU, and quits a session and all of it together, after asking.
Your AI plans in more depth
Vitals shows whether you are on pace for each limit and when it runs out at this rate, counts the tokens Claude Code and Codex used today and this week, and reads every account signed in on this Mac.
The whole Mac around them
An agent costs your Mac memory, CPU and battery as well as tokens. Vitals shows every app with its helpers counted in, with up to a year of history, beside the plans.
See it for yourself
The Agents tab on a developer’s Mac: what is left of each AI plan and when it resets, then every coding agent running and what it started.
Everything Vitals does
One app, paid once, no subscription.
- Processes grouped by app. Every helper process is added to the app that launched it, so a working Mac shows about 60 apps instead of about 1,000 processes, each with one figure for memory, CPU, energy, disk and network.
- A tab per subsystem. Overview, CPU, Memory, Disk, Network, GPU, Neural Engine, Battery, Sound, Bluetooth and Projects, plus Containers while Docker runs, each with its live figures and the apps behind them.
- Your coding agents, and what is left of your plans. An Agents tab with every running coding agent, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and the rest: its project, what it is doing right now, and everything it started, with Quit for the session and all of it together. For Claude, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Antigravity, Grok, Ollama and OpenCode, how much of each plan is left, when it resets and whether you are on pace, for every account signed in on the Mac, and the tokens Claude Code and Codex used today and this week.
- An MCP server for Claude, Codex and Cursor. Claude, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and any assistant that speaks MCP can ask what is running, which app is behind a number, what is on a port, and what the last 30 days looked like. It cannot quit anything by itself: Vitals asks you first. Off until you turn it on.
- A Neural Engine tab. How hard the Neural Engine is working, which apps are using it, and a chart of the last minutes, in the window, the menu bar and on the Overview. On Macs with Apple silicon.
- Inside your browser. Click Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, Brave, Arc or Dia to see its memory and CPU split into tabs, extensions, graphics and the browser itself. Slack, VS Code and similar apps are split by window.
- Up to a year of history. CPU, memory, energy, disk and network from the last hour to the last year, with the apps that used the most, ranked hour by hour for the last two days. Keep 30 days, 90 days, 6 months or a year.
- What keeps the Mac awake, and the fans on. The Battery tab lists the apps holding sleep off, what each said it is doing and for how long. When the Mac runs hot, Vitals names the apps behind it, with Quit beside each.
- Alerts for misbehaving apps. A notification when an app keeps the CPU busy, keeps growing in memory, or hammers the disk or network.
- Dev servers and open ports, by project. Processes grouped by the project folder they run in, with their listening ports, and dev servers left idle for days pointed out and offered to stop.
- A menu bar you arrange. Every readout can be its own menu bar item: CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, temperature, fan speed or battery, as a value, a graph or both, ⌘-dragged into any order. Behind it, a dropdown with every metric, the busiest apps, and a tab for each metric.
- Make it yours. Vitals’ own colors, Monochrome, or a set made for color blindness. The numbers in Rounded, San Francisco, SF Mono, New York or any font on the Mac, light to bold. Comfortable or compact spacing, charts of the last 5, 15 or 30 minutes, light or dark, and exported pictures in the same look.
- Arrange the window and the dropdown. Choose the window’s tabs and their order, and show, hide or reorder the sections, cards and lists on every tab. The dropdown has its own tiles and a List layout with one line per metric. Reset puts everything back.
- Docker containers. A Containers tab with every Docker container’s memory, CPU, network and ports, in the window and the dropdown, and Stop on each, after a confirmation.
- Sound and Bluetooth tabs. The Mac’s output device and level with a slider for every app playing sound, the microphone and the apps using it, and every connected Bluetooth device with its battery, lowest first.
- Units you choose. Celsius or Fahrenheit, bytes or bits for network speed, and CPU per core or per Mac, each with a live example in Settings.
- Temperatures and fans. CPU and GPU temperature on Intel and Apple silicon, M5 included, and fan speed. Hold any fan at a speed you choose, and hand it back to the Mac in one click. The menu bar temperature can follow the CPU, the GPU or the hottest sensor.
- Quit and force quit. Quit an app or a single process, always after a confirmation.
- Keyboard shortcuts and Shortcuts actions. Open the dropdown or the window from any app, and get a reading or the busiest app from the Shortcuts app.
- Export as an image. Save or copy a snapshot of the Mac as a 1200 × 630 share card or a dashboard image.
- In the Dock, if you like. Show in Dock keeps Vitals in the Dock like Activity Monitor. Opened by hand it shows its window; at login it stays in the menu bar.
What Mac users say
Now I find myself stealing quick glances at the menu bar, instead of taking another sip of coffee.
Ed Wiseman Emmy-winning director and producer macOS Activity Monitor is horrible when I’m juggling dev projects and local AI. Vitals is so much better.
Knowix Developer and AI builder After years of using iStats, I’ve uninstalled it, even with a lifetime license. Switched to Vitals on both my Mac Studio and my laptop.
DustyFski Common questions
Can Vitals approve an agent’s request?
No. Vitals shows which sessions are waiting for you; you answer them in the terminal or editor they run in.
Which AI plans does Vitals read?
Claude, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Antigravity, Grok, Grok Bot, Ollama and OpenCode, for every account signed in on this Mac.
Can I use both?
Yes. AgentNotch answers your agents and Vitals watches what they use; neither changes your limits.
Lifetime for $15 while the launch price lasts
One-time paymentLifetime updates14-day refund
Get Vitals for $9How we compared
The AgentNotch column comes from its maker's own site on October 20, 2026. Where the site does not say whether it does something, the cell says "Not stated". If a cell is out of date, email us and we will fix it.
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How to check your limits with nothing installed: How to check your Claude Code and Codex usage limits on a Mac.