Your Mac's stats in your menu bar. CPU, GPU, RAM, power, temps, network, battery - live, native, offline.
No cloud. No accounts. No bloat. Just your data, on your screen.
UP Sysdash is a free native menu bar monitor for Apple Silicon Macs. It sits in your menu bar and shows what your machine is actually doing in real time.
It runs macmon (by vladkens, MIT licensed) in the background to read Apple Silicon performance counters directly. UP Sysdash is the interface layer - the menu bar, the dashboard, the settings.
Everything runs locally. Nothing phones home.
- CPU - overall usage, E-core and P-core frequency and utilization, temperature, power
- GPU - usage, frequency, temperature, power
- ANE - Neural Engine power draw
- Memory - RAM used, swap
- System - total chip power draw
- Network - live download and upload speeds
- Battery - percentage, charging state
- Disk - free space
All values update at your chosen interval (0.5s, 1s, 2s, or 5s). Metric cards include 60-sample sparklines for at-a-glance history.
Grab the latest release from GitHub Releases:
- macOS (Apple Silicon) -
.appinside.dmg
- Open the DMG and drag UP Sysdash to Applications.
- Open it from Applications. macOS will block it on first run - see Gatekeeper below.
- On first launch, an onboarding window asks if you want the app to start at login.
- After that, UP Sysdash lives in your menu bar. Left-click to open the dashboard. Right-click for a live stats snapshot and options.
macOS will block the app on first open because UP Sysdash is not signed with an Apple Developer certificate. I am not paying Apple $99 a year to distribute a free app.
How to open it:
- Try to open UP Sysdash - it will be blocked.
- Open System Settings -> Privacy & Security.
- Scroll down to find the blocked app notice.
- Click Open Anyway and authenticate.
You only do this once.
On macOS 14 and earlier: right-click the app in Finder -> Open -> confirm in the dialog.
Menu Bar tab
- Toggle which stats appear in the menu bar independently: CPU, GPU, temps, RAM, power, battery, net down/up
- Choose a separator between stats: hyphen, pipe, slash, or none
- Live preview updates as you configure
General tab
- Refresh interval: 0.5s / 1s / 2s / 5s
- Launch at Login toggle (uses macOS SMAppService)
- macmon status indicator
- macOS 12.4 Monterey or later
- Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer)
- Intel Macs are not supported
UP Sysdash uses macmon to read Apple Silicon performance counters. The macmon binary ships inside the app bundle - no Homebrew or separate install needed.
Version 1.1 bundles macmon 0.9.0, including its macOS 27 power-counter fixes. CPU and GPU percentages show active residency; CPU usage is weighted by core count. Unavailable temperatures display as —.
The app checks for updates on launch. From 1.1 onward, the Download button opens the DMG download directly. Installed 1.0 copies detect newer releases automatically, but their existing Download button opens the release page.
Metrics arrive through macmon's JSON pipe. Each app owns its helper process, restarts it after an unexpected exit, and stops it on quit.
xcodebuild -project sysdashv1.xcodeproj -scheme sysdashv1 -configuration Release -derivedDataPath build ARCHS=arm64 build
Tests/run-smoke-tests.sh
Tests/run-interface-tests.sh
Tests/run-update-checker-tests.shThe smoke check runs the production monitor against the bundled helper and exercises JSON decoding, nullable temperatures, live readings, refresh changes, crash recovery, and process cleanup. It requires an Apple Silicon Mac with working macmon power counters.
The interface check verifies fixed refresh-control geometry through changing readings and selections at multiple window sizes and in light/dark appearances.
Package a release with scripts/build-dmg.sh 1.1. The script builds the app and creates a DMG with a small PNG background and saved Finder layout. Pass a validated .app path as the second argument to package that exact build. Packaging dependencies stay in .artifacts/.
MIT. See LICENSE.
macmon is also MIT licensed - github.com/vladkens/macmon.
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