Why

Better Resource Monitor is for people who just want a quick, low-noise way to keep an eye on their Mac.

It keeps CPU, memory, GPU, and network usage in the menu bar, so you can catch unusual load without stopping what you’re doing or opening Activity Monitor.

It is built to stay light enough to leave running all day: under 0.1% CPU on Apple Silicon, around 15 MB of memory, and zero network requests.

The technical side is there to support that experience. It installs like a normal Mac app, stays sandboxed, ships on the Mac App Store with full features, and avoids admin-password prompts or background root helpers.

Comparison

System monitor comparison
Feature	Better Resource Monitor	Stats	Eul	iStat Menus
Mac App Store	Yes (full features)	No	Limited	Limited
Admin Password / Privileges	None (sandboxed)	Requires root helper	None	Requires root helper
GPU API Stability	Public API	Private API	Private API	Proprietary
Memory Footprint	~15 MB	~50 MB	~40 MB	~100+ MB
CPU / Energy Impact	< 0.1%	~1%	High (M-series)	~1%
App Size	< 7 MB	~25 MB	~5 MB	~65 MB
Privacy/Telemetry	100% offline	Offline	Offline	Analytics
Status	Active	Active	Unmaintained	Active
Language	Rust	Swift / C++	Swift	Obj-C / Swift
Price	Free	Free	Free	$14.99
License	MIT	MIT	MIT	Proprietary

Third-party numbers are rough estimates. Your mileage may vary.

For more detail, read the Stats comparison or the iStat Menus comparison.

Installation

Get it from the Mac App Store (includes automatic updates) or grab the .dmg from GitHub Releases.

Compatibility

Works on Intel Macs and Apple Silicon Macs running macOS Ventura 13 or newer.

Build from Source

You’ll need Tauri v2 prerequisites and pnpm.

git clone https://github.com/alexx855/better-resource-monitor.git
cd better-resource-monitor
pnpm install
pnpm tauri build

Development

# Run in development mode with hot reload
pnpm tauri dev

# Run tests
cd src-tauri && cargo test

# Run tests with coverage (requires cargo-llvm-cov)
cargo install cargo-llvm-cov
cd src-tauri && cargo llvm-cov --lib --html --output-dir coverage/

Credits

Phosphor Icons - Icon set used in the tray
Alex Pedersen - Maintainer