Recommended Performance monitoring App / Software?

[222ridepegasus]

Hi there just bought an M2 mac book air and was wondering whats the best wat to keep an eye on performance (other than activity monitor). Was thinking an app that can specifically show temperature / throttling if that’s occuring.

Any suggestions very much welcome


K

 

[BanditoB]

I've been a fan of Bjango's iStat Menus for a long time now and have it on all of my Macs. I highly recommend it.

 

[222ridepegasus]

Thanks BanditoB, this was the one I was thinking of, it’s been around for ages. Just needed some confirmation, cheers 😎

 

[Colstan]

If you want simple but reliable, there's the venerable MenuMeters. More updated and closer to iStat Menus is the creatively named Stats. Both are free. While I appreciate the work that bjango has done, I haven't found the need to purchase their product when two quality alternatives are free.

 

[222ridepegasus]

If you want simple but reliable, there's the venerable MenuMeters. More updated and closer to iStat Menus is the creatively named Stats. Both are free. While I appreciate the work that bjango has done, I haven't found the need to purchase their product when two quality alternatives are free.

Cheers Colstan, will check, much appreciated 👍

 

[Queen6]

Nothing, such applications only serve to add load & burn more CPU cycles. I have Macs fan control installed on my M1 MBP and rarely use it, just no need. Use your Mac as intended, the system will take care of itself.

Apple figured this out a long time back, one of my 15" MBP's is approaching 11 years old and it manages itself perfectly well even under 100% load. M2 Air will throttle sooner or later, just the nature of the beast with a passively cooled system...

Q-6

 

[222ridepegasus]

If you want simple but reliable, there's the venerable MenuMeters. More updated and closer to iStat Menus is the creatively named Stats. Both are free. While I appreciate the work that bjango has done, I haven't found the need to purchase their product when two quality alternatives are free.

Guess It makes sense to try thr free first. I’m not a power user, but thought it’d be interesting to see what was going on under the hood

 

[222ridepegasus]

Nothing, such applications only serve to add load & burn more CPU cycles. I have Macs fan control installed on my M1 MBP and rarely use it, just no need. Use your Mac as intended, the system will take care of itself.

Apple figured this out a long time back, one of my 15" MBP's is approaching 11 years old and it manages itself perfectly well even under 100% load. M2 Air will throttle sooner or later, just the nature of the beast with a passively cooled system...

Q-6

Yeah right, sensible angle on it, after all, I cannot really effect how the machine is designed to perform… I guess i just wanted to gauge if it ever throttles with my regular workflow (UX/UI)

 

[Queen6]

Yeah right, sensible angle on it, after all, I cannot really effect how the machine is designed to perform… I guess i just wanted to gauge if it ever throttles with my regular workflow (UX/UI)

Such applications can be informative, equally you cant do much if anything about how the system reacts to the load placed upon it. The fan control apps were of use with the Intel based allowing the user to push the fan curve, that said as the chassis heat soaked you'd pretty much land in the same spot sooner or later.

No harm to have a look with one of the free apps, but I wouldn't run it continuously especially on a passively cooled system where you want to limit extraneous applications.

Q-6

 

[Colstan]

No harm to have a look with one of the free apps, but I wouldn't run it continuously especially on a passively cooled system where you want to limit extraneous applications.

I run MenuMeters on a pathetically underpowered i3 Mac mini and it's typically using around 2% CPU usage with every option enabled. On Apple Silicon, the impact will be even less, so performance impact is negligible.

Where it is the most useful is when a process gets out of control and starts eating up resources in the background. This happens a lot with games, and you'd have no idea about it, without seeing the spike on the CPU graph. It lets you know if you need to force quit the process if that is the case. These tools are unlikely to cause issues, but rogue programs will. Everyone is different, but I will always use such a utility with my Macs.

 

[Colstan]

Ignore-double post

 

[jdb8167]

Such applications can be informative, equally you cant do much if anything about how the system reacts to the load placed upon it. The fan control apps were of use with the Intel based allowing the user to push the fan curve, that said as the chassis heat soaked you'd pretty much land in the same spot sooner or later.

No harm to have a look with one of the free apps, but I wouldn't run it continuously especially on a passively cooled system where you want to limit extraneous applications.

Q-6

I’m working on a menu bar application that monitors temperature sensors in the M1 and now the M2. It is based on a much more sophisticated open source version called Hot. One of the reasons that I wanted my own, simple version was to reduce the CPU load. I have it down to about 1-2% every five seconds or so. As far as Xcode’s performance monitors go, it says my battery load is 0%.

So such monitors don’t have to be a problem. The version that I’m working on needs a new name and still needs a bit of work for the M2. I’ll release it for free as open source at some point though.

 

[svenmany]

Knowledge is power. Even if there's nothing to be done about throttling, knowing it's there could affect the next Mac purchase or help to contribute experience-based information to threads on this website.

I run iStat Menus. It does introduce a small, constant load. Compared to another program many people run, Little Snitch, the load is comparable, but a little less.

I don't see any obvious way to detect throttling using iStat Menus; that was the original request. Perhaps it can be deduced or visible directly in a graph? I see that there is integration with Intel Power Gadget, but that's just for Intel CPU's.

I found https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/11/25/hot-for-macos/ as an example of a simple app that will tell you about throttling.

 

[Queen6]

I’m working on a menu bar application that monitors temperature sensors in the M1 and now the M2. It is based on a much more sophisticated open source version called Hot. One of the reasons that I wanted my own, simple version was to reduce the CPU load. I have it down to about 1-2% every five seconds or so. As far as Xcode’s performance monitors go, it says my battery load is 0%.

So such monitors don’t have to be a problem. The version that I’m working on needs a new name and still needs a bit of work for the M2. I’ll release it for free as open source at some point though.

I don't really see such apps as being problematic. I think they are more relevant towards the Intel based Mac's especially the 15/16 as those that combine fan control can aid the user to balance cooling & fan noise.

My own M1 MBP doesn't throttle which is probably factor and I like to keep what's installed to what I use.

Q-6

 

[BanditoB]

Nothing, such applications only serve to add load & burn more CPU cycles.

They hardly use any cycles as the performance difference in Geekbench with them enabled vs disabled is within the margin of error of the benchmark in my experience.

Also, when it comes to wasting CPU cycles, we are the biggest culprit throwing away millions, billions, and trillions of CPU cycles while the processor waits for us to interact with the system. 😃

 

[russell_314]

Nothing, such applications only serve to add load & burn more CPU cycles. I have Macs fan control installed on my M1 MBP and rarely use it, just no need. Use your Mac as intended, the system will take care of itself.

Apple figured this out a long time back, one of my 15" MBP's is approaching 11 years old and it manages itself perfectly well even under 100% load. M2 Air will throttle sooner or later, just the nature of the beast with a passively cooled system...

Q-6

This so much! People install monitoring apps, cleaning apps, anti malware apps and then wonder why their Mac is sluggish.

If you want to tinker with something buy a Raspberry Pi or yeah I guess you can't get one now but there's dozens of low cost hobby SBCs that you can tinker with.