Better Resource Monitor

A menu bar/tray system monitor for macOS.

Why I built this

Most system monitors (Stats, iStat Menus) need a privileged helper tool to read fan speeds and thermal sensors. That means entering your admin password and running code at root level. I didn’t want that on my machine.

Better Resource Monitor uses only public macOS APIs. No root privileges, no private APIs, no dock icon. Runs sandboxed.

Because it avoids private Apple APIs (which can break between macOS updates), it’s on the Mac App Store with full features. Not a stripped-down “lite” version like other monitors are forced to ship there.

Other monitors poll every sensor they can find, which prevents Apple Silicon from entering deep sleep states. I only track four metrics (CPU, memory, network, GPU), it’s all Rust, and the numbers reflect that. Under 0.1% CPU, roughly 15 MB of RAM. No clock replacement, no weather widget, no fan control.

How it works

Component	macOS
CPU/Memory/Network	`sysinfo` crate
GPU Metrics	IOAccelerator (public IOKit API)

None of this needs sudo.

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.

Installation

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

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 - Creator and maintainer