portview

See what's on your ports, then act on it.

lsof -i is slow and cryptic. ss -tlnp is unreadable. netstat is deprecated. You just want to know what's on port 3000 and kill it.

portview

One command. Every listening port, the process behind it, memory usage, uptime, and the full command — in a colored table. Then inspect, kill, or watch it live.

~1 MB single binary. Zero runtime dependencies. Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mapika/portview/main/install.sh | sh   # Linux/macOS
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mapika/portview/main/install.ps1 | iex         # Windows
brew install mapika/tap/portview                                                      # Homebrew
cargo install portview                                                                # Cargo

Or grab a binary from Releases.

What it does

portview                          # list all listening ports
portview 3000                     # inspect port 3000 in detail
portview node                     # find ports by process name
portview watch                    # interactive TUI with live refresh
portview watch --docker           # TUI with Docker containers as rows
portview kill 3000 --force        # kill what's on port 3000
portview doctor                   # diagnose port conflicts and issues
portview ssh user@server          # inspect ports on a remote host
portview ssh user@server watch    # remote TUI over SSH

Features

Scan

$ portview
╭──────┬───────┬───────┬──────┬──────────┬─────────┬────────┬─────────────────────────────────────╮
│ PORT │ PROTO │ PID   │ USER │ PROCESS  │ UPTIME  │ MEM    │ COMMAND                             │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼──────────┼─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────────────┤
│ 3000 │ TCP   │ 48291 │ mark │ node     │ 3h 12m  │ 248 MB │ next dev                            │
│ 5432 │ TCP   │ 1203  │ pg   │ postgres │ 14d 2h  │ 38 MB  │ /usr/lib/postgresql/16/bin/postgres │
│ 6379 │ TCP   │ 1198  │ redis│ redis    │ 14d 2h  │ 12 MB  │ redis-server *:6379                 │
│ 8080 │ TCP   │ 51002 │ mark │ python3  │ 22m     │ 45 MB  │ uvicorn main:app --port 8080        │
╰──────┴───────┴───────┴──────┴──────────┴─────────┴────────┴─────────────────────────────────────╯

--all includes non-listening connections. --wide shows full commands. --json for scripting.

Watch mode (interactive TUI)

portview watch                    # live-refresh every 1s
portview watch --docker           # Docker containers as first-class rows
portview watch --sort mem         # sort by memory on launch

Tree view (t): Groups child processes under their parents with visual connectors. See which workers belong to which master process at a glance.

Detail view (Enter): Shows the full unwrapped command, working directory, child process list with ports, and open connections (in --all mode).

Doctor

Diagnose common port problems in one command:

$ portview doctor
  ✓ No port conflicts
  ✗ postgres (PID 1203) is listening on 0.0.0.0:5432 — consider binding to 127.0.0.1
  ✓ No Docker-host conflicts
  ✓ No stale connections
  ✓ No high-resource listeners

  1 warning found

Checks for: port conflicts (multiple PIDs on same port), wildcard exposure (databases on 0.0.0.0), Docker-host conflicts, stale TIME_WAIT/CLOSE_WAIT pileups, and high-memory listeners. Docker is auto-detected.

portview doctor --json for CI integration (exit code 1 on errors).

SSH remote mode

Inspect ports on any machine you can SSH to:

portview ssh user@server              # one-shot scan
portview ssh user@server watch        # full interactive TUI
portview ssh user@server doctor       # remote diagnostics
portview ssh user@server 3000         # inspect a remote port
portview ssh user@server --ssh-opt "-p 2222"  # custom SSH port

Requires portview installed on the remote host. Kill actions in the remote TUI are forwarded over SSH.

Docker integration

Add --docker to any command. Docker-published ports appear as first-class rows:

$ portview --docker
╭──────┬───────┬───────┬────────┬──────────┬────────┬────────┬───────────────────────────────────╮
│ PORT │ PROTO │ PID   │ USER   │ PROCESS  │ UPTIME │ MEM    │ COMMAND                           │
├──────┼───────┼───────┼────────┼──────────┼────────┼────────┼───────────────────────────────────┤
│ 3000 │ TCP   │ 48291 │ mark   │ node     │ 3h 12m │ 248 MB │ next dev [docker:web]             │
│ 8080 │ TCP   │ -     │ docker │ pv-nginx │      - │      - │ nginx:alpine :8080->80/tcp        │
╰──────┴───────┴───────┴────────┴──────────┴────────┴────────┴───────────────────────────────────╯

Press d on a Docker row to Stop, Restart, or tail Logs.

JSON output

portview --json                   # pipe to jq, scripts, dashboards
portview --docker --json          # includes Docker ownership data
portview watch --json             # streaming JSON, one array per tick
portview doctor --json            # machine-readable diagnostics

Custom colors

PORTVIEW_COLORS="port=red,pid=magenta,command=bright_cyan" portview

Columns: port, proto, pid, user, process, uptime, mem, command. Use --no-color to disable.

How it works

All data is read directly from the OS — no shelling out to lsof, ss, or netstat.

Docker integration queries docker ps when --docker is passed. SSH mode runs portview --json on the remote host via the system ssh binary.

Why not...

portview is diagnostic-first: understand what's on your ports, then act.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/mapika/portview
cd portview
cargo build --release

Requires Rust 1.85+ (edition 2024). Shell completions and man page are generated at build time.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and guidelines.

Limitations

• Linux: Other users' processes require sudo (needs /proc/<pid>/fd/ access)
• macOS: Other users' processes may require sudo
• Windows: Some system processes not accessible. Kill always force-terminates. Run as Administrator for full visibility.
• Docker: Requires docker CLI and daemon access
• SSH: Requires portview installed on the remote host

License

MIT