Apple Silicon processors don't provide an easy way to view live power consumption. I was interested in this data while testing local LLM models. asitop is a nice and simple TUI for quickly checking current metrics, but it reads data from powermetrics and requires root privileges. macmon uses a private macOS API to gather similar metrics (essentially the same as powermetrics), but runs without sudo. 🎉

• 🚫 Runs without sudo
• ⚡ Real-time CPU / GPU / ANE power usage
• 📊 CPU utilization per cluster
• 💾 RAM / Swap usage
• 📈 Historical charts with average and max values
• 🌡️ Average CPU / GPU temperature
• 🎨 Switchable color themes (6 variants)
• 🪟 Can be displayed in a small window
• 🦀 Written in Rust

• Install macmon using brew:

brew install macmon

• Install macmon using MacPorts:

sudo port install macmon

• Install macmon using Cargo:

cargo install macmon

• Install macmon using Nix:

nix-env -i macmon

Usage: macmon [OPTIONS] [COMMAND]
Commands:
 pipe Output metrics in JSON format
 debug Print debug information
 help Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
Options:
 -i, --interval <INTERVAL> Update interval in milliseconds [default: 1000]
 -h, --help Print help
 -V, --version Print version
Controls:
 c - change color
 v - switch charts view: gauge / sparkline
 q - quit

You can use the pipe subcommand to output metrics in JSON format, which makes it suitable for piping into other tools or scripts. For example:

macmon pipe | jq

This command runs macmon in "pipe" mode and sends the output to jq for pretty-printing.

You can also specify the number of samples to collect using the -s or --samples parameter (default: 0, which runs indefinitely), and set the update interval in milliseconds using the -i or --interval parameter (default: 1000 ms). For example:

macmon pipe -s 10 -i 500 | jq

This will collect 10 samples with an update interval of 500 milliseconds.

{
 "timestamp": "2025年02月24日T20:38:15.427569+00:00",
 "temp": {
 "cpu_temp_avg": 43.73614, // Celsius
 "gpu_temp_avg": 36.95167 // Celsius
 },
 "memory": {
 "ram_total": 25769803776, // Bytes
 "ram_usage": 20985479168, // Bytes
 "swap_total": 4294967296, // Bytes
 "swap_usage": 2602434560 // Bytes
 },
 "ecpu_usage": [1181, 0.082656614], // (Frequency MHz, Usage %)
 "pcpu_usage": [1974, 0.015181795], // (Frequency MHz, Usage %)
 "gpu_usage": [461, 0.021497859], // (Frequency MHz, Usage %)
 "cpu_power": 0.20486385, // Watts
 "gpu_power": 0.017451683, // Watts
 "ane_power": 0.0, // Watts
 "all_power": 0.22231553, // Watts
 "sys_power": 5.876533, // Watts
 "ram_power": 0.11635789, // Watts
 "gpu_ram_power": 0.0009615385 // Watts (not sure what it means)
}

1. Install Rust toolchain

2. Clone the repo:

git clone https://github.com/vladkens/macmon.git && cd macmon

3. Build and run:

cargo run -r

We love contributions! Whether you have ideas, suggestions, or bug reports, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request. Your input is essential to helping us improve macmon. 💪

macmon is distributed under the MIT License. For more details, check out the LICENSE file.

• tlkh/asitop – The original tool. Written in Python, requires sudo.
• dehydratedpotato/socpowerbud – Written in Objective-C, sudoless, no TUI.
• op06072/NeoAsitop – Written in Swift, sudoless.
• graelo/pumas – Written in Rust, requires sudo.
• context-labs/mactop – Written in Go, requires sudo.

P.S. One more thing... Monitoring your Mac's performance with macmon is like having a personal trainer for your processor — keeping those cores in shape! 💪