btoprs

A work-in-progress, standard-library-only terminal resource monitor for Linux and macOS 26 or later. btoprs began with btop++ as its UI inspiration but now evolves independently, choosing behavior and platform integrations on their own merits. On Linux it reads the relevant procfs and sysfs CPU, memory, network, process, mount, thermal, and power-supply entries. On macOS it uses native Mach, libproc, sysctl, IOKit, and SystemConfiguration interfaces. The core macOS collector supports both Apple silicon and the Intel Macs supported by macOS 26. Apple GPU and thermal metrics are optional Apple-silicon features; metrics that the running OS does not expose are hidden.

On Apple silicon, the collectors dynamically resolve IOReport and thermal interfaces and read power-manager and AGX registry snapshots. CPU frequency is derived from per-core performance-state residency and the SoC's frequency tables when the legacy CPU-frequency sysctl is unavailable. Available live clocks are shown beside the individual CPU cores. On macOS 26 and 27 the GPU collector can report activity, weighted clock, dominant performance state, estimated power, temperature, core count, resident unified-memory use, and GPU memory-bandwidth activity from the AGX DCS histogram. Unified memory is labeled UMA rather than VRAM. AVE encoder and AVD decoder session counts are shown directly. Estimated media-engine power and DCS read/write traffic are shown with their units when the current interval produces usable counters; no utilization percentage is invented from them. Every private metric is capability-checked at runtime so missing or renamed channels do not prevent startup.

cargo build --release
target/release/btoprs

The terminal UI exits cleanly with q or Ctrl-C; Esc opens the main menu. Run target/release/btoprs --help for the supported command-line options. See the project notes for platform decisions, known limitations, and verification guidance.

btoprs supports btop-compatible .theme files. All bundled themes are embedded in the executable, including Cargo installations. On startup, missing themes are installed into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/btoprs/themes (normally ~/.config/btoprs/themes). Themes already present in any search directory are left in place, so your edits survive upgrades. Deleted bundled themes are restored on the next startup if no other copy exists.

Readable theme files take precedence over embedded copies. If a bundled theme's file cannot be read, or the theme directory cannot be written, the embedded copy remains available directly from the executable. Legacy btop theme directories are also searched for compatibility.

Install the executable, documentation, themes, and man page under ~/.local with:

make install

On Linux, this also installs the desktop entry and icons. These desktop files are skipped on macOS. The platform is detected automatically; packagers can override it with INSTALL_PLATFORM.

Remove the installed files with make uninstall.

Use PREFIX and DESTDIR for another installation root. cargo install --path . installs the executable with all bundled themes embedded; desktop files and the man page are installed by make install.

License

Licensed under the Apache License 2.0. btop++ provided the initial UI inspiration and some derived material; see NOTICE for attribution.