Guides/Vitals vs Sensei
Vitals vs Sensei
Quick answer
Sensei and Vitals are different kinds of app. Sensei is a maintenance suite: a cleaner, an uninstaller, drive and battery health and a disk benchmark, with a menu bar monitor alongside. Vitals only monitors, and goes deeper: every app with its helper processes counted in, 30 days of history, and alerts when one misbehaves. Choose Sensei for the toolbox; choose Vitals to know which app is slowing the Mac down.
VitalsSensei Choose Vitals if
- You want to see which app is using memory, CPU or battery
- You want 30 days of history and alerts
- You run dev servers and want to see their ports
- You want to pay once, for less
Choose Sensei if
- You want cleaning, uninstalling and drive health in the same app
- You want a disk benchmark or SSD TRIM
- You are on a macOS older than 15
Where Vitals pulls ahead
It lists what is running
Sensei's site does not describe a list of running apps. Vitals is built around one: every app, one row each, with its helper processes folded in and one figure for memory, CPU, energy, disk and network.
History and alerts
Neither is described on Sensei's site. Vitals keeps 30 days for every app and sends a notification when one keeps the CPU busy, keeps growing in memory, or hammers the disk or network.
Pay once, pay less
Sensei is $29 a year or $59 once. Vitals is $9 per Mac during the launch and $29 after, once, with every update for life.
See it for yourself
The same Mac, listed the way Activity Monitor lists it and the way Vitals does. Tap Vitals to watch about 900 processes become eight apps.
Everything Vitals does
One app, one payment, every update for life.
- 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, Battery, Sound, Bluetooth and Projects, plus Containers while Docker runs, each with its live figures and the apps behind them.
- 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.
- 30 days of history. CPU, memory, energy, disk and network for the last hour, 12 hours, 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days, with the apps that used the most, ranked hour by hour for the last two days.
- 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 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.
- 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 cant keep vibecoding everything for $5, i get a finished product, clean ui, and bug fixes
Sai Krishna Founder of Superblog Common questions
Does Vitals clean my Mac?
No. Vitals shows which app is reading and writing to the disk and how much space is free, and never deletes anything. Cleaning, uninstalling and drive health are Sensei's job.
Does Vitals show the battery?
It shows the charge, whether the Mac is on power, and which apps are draining it, with 30 days of history. Battery and drive health checks are Sensei's.
Does Vitals run on older Macs, like Sensei?
No. Vitals needs macOS 15 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel. Sensei runs back to macOS 11.
Get Vitals for $9 while the launch price lasts
One-time paymentLifetime updates14-day refund
Get Vitals for $9How we compared
The Sensei column comes from its maker's own site on September 22, 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.
More comparisons
- Vitals vs Activity Monitor
- Vitals vs iStat Menus
- Vitals vs Stats
- Vitals vs MacPulse
- Vitals vs iStatistica Pro
- Vitals vs ProcXray
- Vitals vs CleanMyMac Menu
- Vitals vs TK-mac
- Vitals vs ProcessSpy
- All 12 Activity Monitor alternatives
- iStat Menus alternatives
- Stats alternatives
- Task Manager for Mac
- Best system monitors for Mac
- Best menu bar monitors for Mac
- Best volume mixers for Mac
Wondering why apps show so many rows in Activity Monitor? Read about helper processes.