What is Reddit's opinion of
iStat Menus?
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➔ iStat Menus website
By popularity on Reddit, this Service is:
55 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
iStat Menus Paid
It's an amazing little app that shows you CPU usage, RAM usage, etc... almost any stat you want, in your menu bar. I've installed it on every Mac I've ever had.
I’d ask you to expand, but I don’t want to put your bullshitting skills on the spot.
OP obviously meant something similar to istat menu
“Network Keep on top of what’s being sent and received for all network connections with history graphs, current bandwidth usage, and a bandwidth breakdown for the top apps, as well as detailed connection info, bandwidth graphs, public and private IP addresses, and an internet connectivity indicator.”
You’re imagining, it appears to me, as if OP is asking for some perpetual speedtest.net result. I don’t even want to try wrapping my head around the stupidity of that.
I'll throw in a recommendation I myself had from a friend when I got into owning my early '11 MBP for iStat Menus.
The wealth of info is quite impressive that it manages to pull from the system, sensors and the SMC etc and there's a free trial that lasts like a couple weeks which I used before purchasing if you'd like to take a look. Also you can set a custom fan table which is nice and part of the reason I bought it (because hur dur, default fan table likes to cook the laptop, thanks Apple!)
How do you hook it up? HDMI? MiniDisplay?
First, check the general stats of your computer using tools
such as iStat Menu: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
HWSensor: https://sourceforge.net/projects/hwsensors/
You would also need intel power gadget
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-power-gadget
Using these monitoring tools. Check your CPU and GPU frequencies when it “seemed” slow
If the cpu is clocked at 800mhz it is throttling (may it be by cpu temp or some other sensor, that might be faulty or just got too hot)
It's called iStat https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
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note: It's listed as $10 in the app store but they have it free to download on their site as well.
This sort of thing typically happens when either the fans are dirty (i.e. covered in dust) and/or the ducts under the screen are blocked by dust. The Mac heats up very quickly due to heat dissipation not happening normally and it compensates by running the fans at full speed. Hence the noise.
A good way to know for sure is to start with a cold Mac. If the fans go ti full speed after a couple of minutes while you're just browsing email, then you've got a cooling problem.
There's only one way to fix this, and it involves opening the Mac, carefully removing the fans and cleaning each one (there are two) very carefully with a brand new synthetic paintbrush, the softest one you can find. The ducts you can clean both with the brush (but after you clean the fans) and by blowing air through them.
DO NOT blow compressed air on the fans. They're very delicate and even a slight offset will render them useless. Don't worry though, I do this several times a year for my self and my clients and I've never damaged one. Just be careful and patient and your Mac will once again run cool and silent.
Btw, there's an app called iStat Menus that you can buy (and try for free first for 15 days), that will tell you exactly what's going on under the hood: temperature sensors, fans speeds, etc. this often helps to be sure of what the problem is.
Depending on the model of MB you own, you'll need small Philips and Torx drivers as well as possibly a pentalobe driver to open the back panel if yours is a Retina model.
macOS has a lot of similar functionality already built-in to match most of SysInternals features. There are some good things in Utilities, there are DTrace scripts since like 10.4 Tiger, and there are a few 3rd-party monitoring apps like iStat or Sensei. It would help a little more if we knew specifically which set of tools in SysInternals you are really after and we could help recommend replacements.
As far as running a web server, you mention that you're a small web hosting business. Are you planning to serve sites to customers off this server or is this more of a test environment? As much of a Mac fanboy as I am, you'd probably be better off setting up a small linux server for production sites, but whatever. What type of sites are you planning on hosting? You can install the ever-popular Nginx on a Mac for use as a web server or any reverse proxying you may need (I have used it both ways no problem with my macOS homelab in my apartment). Apache is already a part of macOS, but you can run MAMP if your sites are built using WordPress. You can go even simpler and spin up servers using something like:
npm i -g serve serve
If you need something stronger, you can upgrade to serve's big brother Vercel
It's not free, but I paid a few bucks years ago for istat menus and I'm still using it. My preferred customisation is to replace the stock clock with it so that clicking brings up a drop down full of stats at a glance.
AFAIK there’s nothing on Windows similar to iStat Menus where users can increase fan speed and also set rules on those speed based on CPU/systemsystem temperature:
https://bjango.com/help/istatmenus6/fans/
Since it can done via registry and Surfaces like any modern devices are equipped with internal sensors, why is there no fan control utility?
I highly recommend iStat Menus or something similar - it gives you a LOT of information about your computer including all the temperatures, fan speeds, cpu usage, memory usage etc. Fully configurable.
Your problem sounds strange - I used several Virtual Machines on my previous macbook with 16gb of ram and it was running fine. I now have 32gb of memory but I need it to run some heavy Windows VMs with memory intensive apps. Never had an issue.
Haven’t tried it on my M1 yet, but I use iStat Menus to keep track of CPU, ram, network usage, disk activity etc. on my Intel macs. You can also check temps and fan speed (although the latter won’t apply to the air). The latest version is available for Apple silicon.
Okay thanks for clarifying. If I were you I'd try and figure out exactly how fast the fans are spinning. iStat Menu can do it (a highly reputable app, and I think there's a free trial period): https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
The last iMac I had (an older model then yours) idled at around 1200rpm, and was virtually silent at that speed. At 2000 it was noticeable, and 3000 has loud, but common when doing highly CPU intensive tasks for long periods of time.
Maybe search around a little to see what other users report for idle fan speed?
A very interesting problem :) And I think I found a partial solution :)
Install Django's iStat Menus. Then, add the time to the menubar and disable all other features (like CPU graph, network speed, temps). The time format is customizable with a bunch of tokens, i.e. for 12 hours, 24 hours, minutes, etc. You can remove all tokens, and just add a couple of spaces there.
Caveat: you can only add one spacer like that.
Is there anything like this for Windows? https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ I use this on my Retina MBP and my Mac Pro if something is taxing the CPU it keeps graphs and records of what it was. Also it does a great job at showing what is abusing your battery and what the general health of the battery is.
While it wouldn't solve this issue at least it would give more information.
I have resorted to hibernating instead of sleeping, I'd rather put the Surface to sleep but until MS works out the issues I really don't see many other ways to do this. My rMBP drops maybe 1-2% while in sleep mode, this is plain ridiculous.
iStat Menus is a really good app. And is quite useful after you have found the running temps of your computer. If you are only going to check it once, then you could use the trial.
iStat Menus does a lot more than just provide battery runtime.
Besides monitoring all the sensors on your Mac from unit CPU to memory pressure etc, it all also charts a full month history of the device behaviours:
https://i.imgur.com/U39thMa.jpg
Everything from the CPU temperature, cooling fan speed, memory pressure or network data. To top it all off, you can also customize the rules and behaviours of the cooling fan(s) on your MacBook/iMac.
As others have stated, generally speaking one does not need to reboot a Mac unless for system updates or due to some misbehaving app or connected hardware.
I think your situation may fall into the category of 'misbehaving apps'. The apps you mention as part of your daily routine are some of the worse offenders in terms of RAM usage. That said, even with that particular set of apps, you are likely better off simply restarting the apps rather than restarting your Mac.
If you are experiencing this on a daily basis you may also want to evaluate if you have enough RAM. The best way to do this is to watch the 'memory pressure' of your system. Apple has a support document on the topic.
The easiest way to monitor memory pressure, IMHO, is iStat Menus. This will allow you to put a memory pressure indicator in your menu bar.
FWIW- I generally reboot the Macs I use for development maybe once every few months, often only for system updates. That said I avoid Chrome and VSCode at all costs.
Nice list. I second having Bartender if you have a 14" or 16" MacBook Pro from 2021 as it allows you to work around having the notch combined with a lot of menu items. I also would recommend iStat Menus (https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/) as well as that gives you an idea of what your system is doing in real time.
If you are into keeping up with your hardware stats or other such things, iStats is something I put on every mac I have. Also, it's a little pricey but Soundsource is a great way to control audio.
So basically a knock off of iStat Menus...
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
It's great that there is a free alternative, but I see no advantages over iStat Menus other than being free. iStat Menus is well worth the $12 IMO.
If you have the 100-ish charger the battery will be heating up because it’s due to the energy loss. Batteries cannot overheat or they will either lose capacity or break sometimes even blow up, it would be reasonable that apple protects your battery by cooling it. If you want to check the temps I recommend Istat menus (https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/).
Sometimes a temperature sensor breaks which will throttle the CPU hard (make it run really slow). To check for that you could use https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/. Look if any of them reports a high value like 100+ deg even if nothing runs on your machine.
Looks like ISTATS just added support for M1 based macbooks last month, is your ISTATS up to date?
I second Goodsync, I’ve tested it against chronosync and I get faster speeds with SSDs.
I also wonder if the app is reporting speeds poorly, I like to use iStat Menus to watch transfer speeds independently of the sync app.
Does Windows have a system monitor application like iStat Menus on Mac. God laptops usually come with multitude of sensors to monitor not only the CPU and GPU but the SSD, the heat of the chassis and the fans. You can even raise the speed of the fans, set it based in rules etc
SMART isn’t the issue. iMacs still see SMART status of any SSD or HDD installed. The problem is that the iMac’s firmware refuses to recognize anything but an Apple branded drive. If there’s no Apple drive, it perceives an issue and turns the fans on 100% for “safety” reasons. You probably didn’t break anything. This is Apple’s way of screwing over people who work on their own hardware.
Mac Fan Control or iStat Menus are my vote for replacement fan controllers.
Just so you know a couple usually means two, this is a proper list.
The YouTubers were likely using iStat Menus or another similar application. There is no way to read this built-into macOS.
I have never used Intel Power Gadget, though it seems to purely be a monitoring tool, it doesn’t offer over or underclocking options.
You’ll just have to get used to how some applications exit when you click the red button and some don’t. There is no way on the current operating system to do what you want.
What you saw wasn’t putting actual applications or even aliases on the Desktop but Launchpad
The Touch ID behavior is expected: “Every time you start up, restart, or log out, you need to type your password to log in to your user account.”
What? It shows history graphs for literally everything you can imagine. Check out their website. The Mac App Store version might be gimped.
It even gathers cpu frequency graphs if you have intel power gadget installed
I'm just going to go ahead and say it since.... while it is extremely rare... it is not impossible. It's just that tech don't like to tel people that this could be the problem since it usually (and justifiably) freaks them out.
Maybe your computer is running hotter than it's supposed to.
Your CPU is only supposed to get to about (at most) 99°C. At that point it's supposed to slow itself down. if it can't manage the heat that way, it's supposed to shut itself down.
So here's what we can do to check to make sure it's not the computer getting hotter than it's supposed to. try out the free trial to iStat Menus and start looking at your sensors. iStat is really nice because it will show you a one hour, 24 hour, and one week view of of charts of every single temperature sensor in the laptop. Run your computer like normal and take note of any errors or temps that go above 99°C.
I see the same thing when connecting a third party charger to my Mac. This is my RAVPower 61W charger, it still charges the mac fine.
If you're keen on getting more information on battery charge rate, and really anything else technical about your system. I highly recommend iStat Menus:
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
This is what iStat Menus is telling me:
Edit: Not sure on the 75W. Maybe a cable issue?
Likely an AMD issue, though I've had that with Intel CPUs (both on real Macs and Hackintoshes) when running sessions with lots of virtual instruments on low I/O Buffer Sizes -- in these instances, either increasing the I/O Buffer Size or bouncing virtual instruments to audio fixed the issue(s).
Try setting the Preferences -> Audio -> I/O Buffer Size to 1024.If the issue persists, try bouncing down each of your virtual instruments to audio.If the issue still persists, restart your computer.If it stiiiill persists, try resetting your PRAM (or NVRAM).
Just to troubleshoot, you can also set the I/O Buffer Size to 1024, open a new session, import a couple WAVs, and make a couple virtual instruments. See if there's a tool like Intel Power Gadget for AMD (perhaps iStat Menu or XRG.app might work?) to view your CPU's thermals and Utilization. MIDI should stay in sync and sound should remain crisp with only 4 tracks and 0 plug-in's present. If these are true, it's likely that your CPU simply cannot keep up with the number of sounds being processed in the screenshot'd session.
Cheers!
It’s one of the more surprising and ironic twist on Windows (especially on laptops)- that there’s no options for users including from 3rd party to control the speed of the cooling fan(s). On the Mac, there are quite a few 3rd party options: SMC Fan, Mac Newburgh Control (free) or the one I’m using, iStats menus
Try use iStat Menus.
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
It measures current graphics RAM (VRAM) usage.
Also you can force reset the VRAM by simply changing scaled resolution via Display settings.
I'm seeing a similar problem with Firefox 70.0.1 (64-bit) on Mojave. iStat Menus shows me that the system repeatedly switches from the integrated GPU to the discrete GPU and back until I close the tab containing Google Maps. This also happens on websites that embed Google Maps in a frame.
IIRC I started seeing this behavior under 69.0, which made this change:
>macOS users on dual-graphics-card machines (like MacBook Pro) will switch back to the low-power GPU more aggressively, saving battery life.
Previously, I'd actually been frustrated because Firefox would continue to require the discrete GPU even after I'd closed the graphics-intensive tab(s). Now it switches back to the integrated one too quickly.
I haven't been able to find any relevant bug reports, although I admittedly haven't looked very hard.
Out of curiosity, have you perhaps tried resetting you computer’s PRAM and SMC controller?
And just to toss out another idea, you could potentially try an app like iStat Menus just to confirm what temperature your CPU cores are running at. If they’re running much hotter than 70°–75° C, that might not be a good sign.
Along with my previous suggestion, something else that will help while gaming or whenever the system is under load, is to use a manual fan controller like iStat Menus or Macs Fan Control along with a fan stand of some kind. I've been using this one for ages and a combination of all three (new thermal paste, internal fan(s) at 100%, and external fan) drops temps by over 20°C.
You have to have manual fan control of those trashcans. they were design with horrible ventilation and overheat doing anything adult like.
we use istats and crank up the fans.
These trashcans cripple under Resolve coloring at 2k & 4k, so much that Resolve, after hearing of performance issues, integrated Render Speeds so you could render at half or 25% the speed to not over heat, and spit out freking digital artifacts on your exports (which I learned the hard way @ midnight close to a deadline)
Use Bartender 3, iStat Menus 😀, LastPass!!, if you are learning some coding.. have Xcode and make use of the tutorials and build your way through iOS Apps!
Cheers
You could try installing iStatMenus pro and using its manual fan controls to override Apple’s default fan curve on free trial. https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
I’d also consider popping the bottom off and using compressed air to blow out any dirt/dust.
Yes. I’ve experienced it on Macs, PCs, iPhones, Androids... you name it. Even the fastest computer on the planet will do that on occasion. It usually happens when there’s something big trying to load, but it should go away fairly quick. It’s super frustrating.
You know, I would highly recommend you try out iStat Menus. It’s like Activity Monitor on steroids. It can show you everything your computer is doing like gauges on a race car. Just watching the charts while you work will eventually show you where your computer tops out in real time. (It also can change the date and time to show a full calendar, control fan speed, and a bunch of other handy stuff).
Hello, I can't comment on your specific usage as its out of my area but I recently got a 2018 15" MBP with
- 2.9GHz 6-core i9 processor
- Pro Vega 20 graphics
- 32GB Ram
- 2TB storage
I have put it well through its paces with gruelling tasks over an extended period and haven't noticed any extensive thermal or throttling issues like reported but I do use a free app "Macs Fan Control by crystalidea - www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control " to force the fans to rev up much earlier and when I have checked my processors clock rate in "iStat menus - https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ " it's always showing 4.50GHz to 4.80GHz under heavy load at around or below 80º but the chassis and especially the bottom of the MBP becomes very hot to touch!
iStat Menus will give you all kinds of handy info about your computer, it'll also let you manually set fan speed.
Given that it's going to be a 9 y/o laptop very soon, keeping it up and running is key to it's longevity. When I got mine a few months ago, it was plenty clean, but I quickly noticed that idle temps for both CPU & GPU would sit around 50° Celsius, and quickly jump up to 70-80° when either browsing with Chrome, or more graphical tasks, all while the computer had little concern to ramp up the fans. Setting the fans to 50% fan speed above 45°c, meant that I could now use my laptop without it trying to cook whatever surface it was sitting on, and also preventing any further heat related damage it might've seen in its life.
Memory... 8GB is the tested, and Apple approved max amount for macOS, however, you can install 16GB and use all of it if you install Windows under Bootcamp, which for me at least does come in handy from time to time.
I have the exact same model, if you have any further questions.. Ask away!
Do you get the same problem when booting from a USB drive?
Do you get the same problem when running from mains after battery is fully charged?
Try using something like iStat Menus to check the individual temperature sensors.
I do agree, you won't need that. What can improve the experience when you have it on your knees, is a cushion lap try. That way you wont get hot knees when it operates at full power and it have also a safe standing space (such a try is also useful for other occasions).
If you want to keep an eye on your temperatures and also control the fan, I suggest iStat Menus. Its a comprehensive little app that reside in the top menu of your mac's display and let you keep an eye on all sorts of data about your mac including (but not only) a whole page of all sensors. Sadly it isn't free, single licence goes for $17.84 but i found it always worth. It have also a 14 day trial, so you can throughly test it.
Sorry I totally gapped out didn't realize where I was for a second lol. Check out iStat Menus: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
It's the one I use on my Mac and it's awesome. I know the dev he's legit gold.
Here's what mine looks like. This is on my real Mac Pro. You should see at least 4 (your GPU fan, CPU fan and 2 case fans). Stay safe out there :)
I think this is caused by overheating too. Install iStat Menus and monitor the temps and what is using the CPU, RAM, etc.
Is this happening in Chrome? What about in other browsers or not while online at all?
Boot to Safe Mode and see if the problem persists. Shut down, then boot up and hold SHIFT to get into Safe Mode.
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Almost all problems like this can be attributed to overheating. I have not heard of any known issues with this model and/or video card.
Well you can't really take that one apart easily.
Definitely run MalwareBytes. Maybe try iStat Menu, it will show you the temperature and you can monitor the CPU and RAM usage and try to figure out what is causing the problem. It is free for 14 days:
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
I definitely think it is malware, might be a few different fake programs running. I see it all the time, some weird backup programs, MacKeeper, etc.
Also you can boot to the Recovery Partition or a bootable OSX USB drive and then run First Aid in Disk Utility on your boot drive:
Boot from the Recovery HD volume by restarting your Mac while pressing the Command and R keys.
The OS X Utilities window appears.
Select Disk Utility and click Continue.
When the Disk Utility window appears, click the First Aid tab to select that function of Disk Utility.
Click the icon for your boot hard drive at the left of the Disk Utility window.
Click the Repair Disk button.
Your Mac whirs and hums for a few minutes, and the results window tells you what’s going on. Ultimately, First Aid tells you (you hope) that the drive has been repaired and is now okay. If so, go back to work.
Quit Disk Utility by choosing Disk Utility→Quit Disk Utility, by pressing Command+Q, or by clicking the red Close Window gumdrop.
Reboot without holding any keys down.
According to this thread, iStats Menu is the way to go. Here's their website
- Terminal
- There's this
- Nothing really like Rainmeter, iStat Menus might help scratch the itch depending on what you're using it for
- Yeah you'll want to set up Windows in Boot Camp if you want to game but don't expect great performance, none of Apple's line up have great GPUs
- Sublime Text is Sublime Text
- No Notepad++ but there's so many other great text editors. Like Sublime Text, which you've already mentioned.
- SSH is available natively in terminal
Okay, Seems interesting, A few things, Have you tried a different browsers Ie, if you had the problem on safari then try chrome and visa versa, And when it does happen what are your usage and thermals like on your CPU?
-Lyx.
>Bring back magsafe, it was a fuck up to get rid of that. It has saved my laptop multiple times.
But it's a proprietary port that only Apple can make, versus four universal ports.
>Minimum 256gb ssd and up.
It's already got a 256GB SSD as stock, which also happens to quite literally be the fastest SSD available on a laptop (3.1Gb/s write, 2.1Gb/s read)...
>The touch bar seems useless, what can it do that can't be done on screen?
The screen is part of a security system that is totally separate from the rest of the OS. It literally doesn't even share the CPU or GPU with the rest of the laptop. TouchID and the video camera are all wired through this second SoC for far better security along with the TouchBar, which remains to be seen how useful it proves.
>I would copy that for OSX.
Or, y'know, install a simple clock app into MacOS's status bar. MacOS isn't like iOS, it's no less customisable than Windows is (I literally use iStat Menu which can do exactly what you want)
>Double the size of the battery.
Why? It already lasts far longer than most laptops.
I used Watts because I had it handy but you can use Coconut Battery or iStat Menus for similar data.
Download and run https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/mac/ If you dont have CCleaner - I would run that as well; https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner-mac
If you want iStat, go directly to their site; https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
Is it every 10-20 minutes while browsing? Might just be managing heat as it's supposed to. Check out the app iStat Menus. I use this to keep an eye on my processor usage and GPU/CPU temps, among other things. You can control your fans manually using this app, but beware of limiting them. Overheating is a real threat with how compact they're building these MacBooks.
I had similar issues with Davinci Resolve. The fix for me was installing something like iStat Menus:
https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/
This has an option to set the fan speed. once I set the fan speed to max. the problem goes away.