Gaugebar — Menu Bar System Monitor for Mac

Gaugebar puts a small system monitor in the Mac menu bar. A gauge or a live figure sits beside the clock, and one click opens a panel with CPU, memory, network, disk, battery and the busiest processes, each with a minute of history. It needs no permissions and never connects to the internet.

The whole picture, one click away

The panel keeps updating while it is open, and every sparkline holds the last 60 readings, newest on the right. The menu bar item can change at any time without closing anything.

Every core, at a glance

The gauge and the large figure show overall load, split into User and System, with the load average for 1, 5 and 15 minutes. One bar per core means a single app pinning one core stands out straight away.

Memory, counted the way macOS counts it

In use is App memory plus Wired plus Compressed, the same sum Activity Monitor uses, beside swap and memory pressure as macOS reports it. The disk card shows free space on the startup disk and read and write rates.

Traffic as it happens

Download and upload per second across Wi-Fi, Ethernet and tethering, drawn on one scale, with totals since launch and the local IP address.

See what is busy

The five processes using the most CPU right now, measured the way Activity Monitor measures them, with battery charge and the thermal state macOS reports.

The menu bar shows what matters

Choose a plain gauge, the CPU figure, CPU and memory together, network rates, or a tiny CPU sparkline. Gauge Only is the narrowest, for a crowded menu bar.

How it works

• Click the menu bar icon and the panel opens underneath it, updating for as long as it stays open. Click anywhere else to put it away.
• Right-click or Control-click the icon for the options menu without opening the panel. The same options sit behind the ••• button at the top of the panel.
• Menu Bar Shows picks what sits beside the clock: Gauge Only, CPU Percentage, CPU and Memory, Network Rates or CPU Sparkline.
• Update sets the refresh to every 1, 2 or 5 seconds. A slower update uses a little less energy.
• Open at Login keeps Gaugebar in the menu bar from the moment the Mac starts, and Open Activity Monitor is one click away for the full picture.

Opening it the first time

Gaugebar is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a normal double-click. Gaugebar asks for no permissions at all, so there are no further prompts.

Does it show temperatures?

No. macOS offers no public way to read the temperature sensors, so Gaugebar shows the thermal state instead: Nominal, Fair, Serious or Critical. Serious or Critical means macOS is slowing things down to cool off.

Does it list every process?

It lists the apps and services running under your own account. System processes owned by macOS are not readable without administrator rights, so they are left out. Open Activity Monitor from the options menu for the full list.

Does it send anything anywhere?

No. There is no account and no network access. Nothing is recorded or saved apart from the two menu choices, and every figure comes from information macOS makes available to any app.

Does the monitor slow the Mac down?

In testing it used around 0.1% CPU while idle. Setting Update to every 5 seconds uses a little less energy again.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Mac with Apple silicon or Intel running macOS 13 Ventura or later.