htop

An interactive process viewer for Unix

System & Monitoring Productivity linuxmacosbsd C GPL-2.0

Description

htop is an interactive process viewer for Unix systems. It's a much more feature-rich and user-friendly alternative to top, with mouse support, tree view, filtering, searching, and the ability to send signals to processes.

Install

homebrewbrew install htop

aptsudo apt install htop

pacmansudo pacman -S htop

AI Summary

Interactive process viewer and system monitor. A much better top with mouse support, tree view, filtering, and easy process management.

Capabilities

+ Interactive process list with sorting and filtering
+ Tree view showing parent-child process relationships
+ CPU, memory, and swap usage meters
+ Search and filter processes
+ Send signals (kill, terminate) to processes
+ Mouse support for navigation
+ Customizable meters and layouts

Use When

→ Monitoring system resource usage
→ Finding and killing resource-hungry processes
→ Investigating system performance issues
→ Need an overview of running processes

Avoid When

x Need machine-parseable process data (use ps)
x Automated monitoring (use prometheus/grafana)
x Need historical performance data

Usage Patterns

Launch interactive viewer

htop

Opens the interactive process viewer

Filter by user

htop -u username

Show only processes owned by a specific user

Sort by memory

htop --sort-key=PERCENT_MEM

Launch sorted by memory usage

Input / Output

stdout: Interactive TUI (no meaningful stdout when piped)

Exit codes:

0 Normal exit

Related Tools

btop alternative

btop is a more modern alternative with GPU monitoring

View AGENTS.md for htop