Metra

中文 · Releases

Metra is a terminal system monitor for Linux and macOS. It puts hardware charts and processes in task-manager-style tabs, and works over SSH.

Linux

macOS

Install

Download a binary from Releases, or use the installer:

curl -fsSLO https://github.com/raywcm/metra/releases/latest/download/install.sh
sh install.sh
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
metra

The installer checks SHA-256 and installs to ~/.local/bin. Add that directory to your PATH if needed. Set METRA_PREFIX to change the destination or METRA_VERSION to select a release.

Homebrew:

brew tap raywcm/metra https://github.com/raywcm/metra
brew install raywcm/metra/metra

Linux packages are also available as .deb, .rpm and .pkg.tar.zst. There is no apt or yum repository.

Metra runs as a single executable; it does not need Go, Python or a background service. GPU and NPU metrics use the drivers and management interfaces already installed on the host. Builds are available for Linux and macOS, on amd64 and arm64.

What it shows

• Overview: CPU, memory, disk, network and accelerator activity on one page.
• Processes: CPU and resident memory, search, process tree, details and termination with confirmation. The default order is CPU, then memory, then PID.
• Hardware tabs: larger history charts, memory composition, disk activity and throughput, and network traffic by interface.
• Accelerators: per-device memory and engine activity, with clocks, temperatures, power and PCIe / HBM bandwidth where the driver exposes them.

Charts use full and half block characters. As the terminal gets smaller, secondary charts give way to values; in very small windows, values remain scrollable. Large CPU counts use a compact per-core table. Grid lines are off by default.

Metra reads Linux affinity, cgroup and Slurm limits when available. It filters Snap mounts, pseudo filesystems and internal container interfaces, while keeping data volumes and active VPNs.

Hardware support

Hardware	Linux	macOS
CPU, memory, disks, network, processes	Yes	Yes
NVIDIA GPU	nvidia-smi, optional NVML counters	—
AMD / Intel GPU	DRM sysfs, depending on driver	IOAccelerator, depending on driver
Apple GPU	—	IORegistry; shared memory, renderer and tiler activity
Ascend NPU	npu-smi; engine activity and HBM	—
Other NPUs	accel sysfs, depending on driver	Apple Neural Engine identification only

Unavailable metrics are omitted. Device identification does not imply that utilization counters are readable. Accelerator utilization is the highest reported engine utilization, rather than a sum of engines. See sampling and platform notes for the details.

Keys

Key	Action
← / →, Tab / Shift+Tab	Switch tabs
↑ / ↓, j / k	Select a row or scroll
PgUp / PgDown, Home / End	Move through longer views
Space	Pause or resume
/	Search processes
s / r	Change sort field / reverse order
t	Toggle process tree
Enter / d	Process details
x	End a process; y confirms, Esc cancels
c	Toggle per-core CPU view
,	Settings; arrows adjust, Enter saves, Esc cancels
?	Help
q / Ctrl+C	Quit

Process CPU usage counts one logical core as 100%, so a process can exceed 100%. New processes need two samples before CPU usage is available. Termination sends SIGTERM using your current permissions; Metra does not elevate privileges or send SIGKILL.

Settings

English and Simplified Chinese are built in. Language and light / dark theme follow the environment by default; both can be changed in Settings.

metra --language zh-CN --theme light
metra --interval 2s
metra --snapshot
metra --help

Settings are saved to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/metra/settings.json, or the platform default: ~/.config/metra/settings.json on Linux and ~/Library/Application Support/metra/settings.json on macOS. Use --config PATH for a separate configuration.

Build

Requires Go 1.26 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/raywcm/metra.git
cd metra
make build
./bin/metra

Built with Bubble Tea, Bubbles, Lip Gloss and gopsutil.

For tests, terminal recording and release builds, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

MIT. Dependency licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.