Macs are powerful devices, and with the introduction of the custom Apple silicon M1 Macs and MacBooks, it has become more imperative that you manage the background apps and monitor power consumption.

System Monitor is an application for the menu bar of OS X, designed to inform you unobtrusively about the activity of your computer. You can retrieve up-to-date technical data any time, like process load, main memory consumption, storage space, disk activity, communication on network interfaces, etc. By positioning the app in the menu bar. System Utility 13.1 MB, all iOS devices, iOS 5.0 or later, Developer: Zakia Mahzabin This app displays the most information of the three. Not only does it present the most important data in easy.

Don’t get us wrong, the M1 SOC is fast and is the fastest of the chips that we’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t mean that you should leave everything to the computer and not do anything as it will consistently deliver poor results and keep on getting slower over time. However, using a system monitor brings a lot of benefits, and they are:

• In-depth monitoring of apps and processes.
• Maintaining a smooth user experience.
• Helps terminate unresponsive and unwanted tasks and applications.

Are you currently taking full advantage of all the techy help you can get?

If you are not sure, I’m glad you are here. As a Mac geek, I have been testing some system monitoring tools and I’m happy to share my favorites with you.

Quick jump to…

Let’s start with the standard: Activity Monitor

Your Mac comes with a built-in system monitoring application known as Activity Monitor. It is excellent for closing unresponsive applications and seeing real-time CPU, Network, Disk status or Energy usage. So, how do you access the Activity Monitor? – Follow the steps below to get the activity monitor running for you.

• Firstly, Go to your “Applications” folder and then to the “Utility” folder.
• Then double-click on the “Activity Monitor”, which will bring up a window.
• This is the Activity Monitor app, and here you’ll see five tabs and a list of entries that changes every few seconds. The Tabs contain the following information – CPU, Memory, Energy, Disk Usage and Network.

Note: The Activity Monitor shows you real-time usage and power consumption. It also allows you to close and terminate all unresponsive tasks or tasks, hogging up too much performance.

Is the built-in Activity Monitor good enough?

The Activity Monitor is a decent app from Apple and is ideally suited to beginners. However, if you want to have extra control over what you’re doing and the processes running, you would have to opt for the third-party solutions listed below.

The Activity monitor helps you by displaying the main processes and the percentage load on the CPU and GPU. It can also force-quit any unresponsive application and help recover your Mac to a normal running state. However, there are many features and information that it misses or hides due to Apple’s clutter-free and simple design idealogy. Hence, third-party applications are better alternatives for the program.

Therefore, the built-in Activity is popular with beginners and casual users, while professionals use 3rd-party apps with more functionality and readily available data.

Try a better monitor: iStat Menus

Pricing: Free for seven days and then a $9.99 per month Setapp subscription, or you can purchase it for $14.15 and can be upgraded for $11.79 (includes six months of weather data)

iStat Menus is genuinely outstanding and deliver some of the best user experience possible. When it boils down to which app provides a better and robust customizable app experience, then the iStat menu shines the brightest and helps you monitor the system performance of your Mac. It works with recognizing all apps and integrating the charts in the menu bar on top of your Mac to access the numbers quickly. It is also lightweight and runs in the background with zero to no performance hit.

You can get started using the app by downloading and installing the app from the link above. After you’re done installing, you will be greeted with a pop-up window for all the settings and customizations that you can do. However, the main feature of monitoring will help you readily keep track of your Mac’s performance and allow you to see if anything is hindering it or not. Here is the complete list of items that iStat Menus keep tracks of and help monitor:

• Disk Usage
• Memory Consumption and Availability
• CPU and GPU performance
• Battery and Power Information
• Displaying data such as Weather, Network information and Sensor state

How can you use iStat Menus to manage processes?

iStat Menus has a straightforward UI that can help you manage operations and terminate unresponsive tasks or background running apps that hog up performance and memory. In addition, we use it to check the background apps and maintain all the processes that impact the performance. This helps us optimizing and planning our workflow and better improve the overall UI experience.

It also has a comprehensive graph page that helps us monitor the total time spent working and gaming, and this data helps me out by analyzing and taking out time for other day to day stuff. Finally, the weather information panel that we’ll discuss shortly works excellent to help us plan our day and move forward with our day.

You can also do this and enable the settings to make it more productive by:

• Go into the app and look for the CPU and GPU tab on the left-hand side of your screen.
• Click on the tab and now look for ‘Processes’ and clear any unwanted task or process you want to.

Note: You can also visit the other tabs. We recommend you check out the Memory tab to quickly and efficiently manage all the different processes and apps that can limit your performance by staying in memory.

Customization Options

iStat Menus use a menu bar integration method to display all the information. This can lead to problems such as a cluttered menu bar or accessibility concerns. However, you can lay these concerns to rest as iStat Menus is highly customizable. You can choose what to display on the menu bar and what to hide on the menu bar. You also have the option to hide the icons from your menu bar temporarily and customize the update frequency so that the icons aren’t disturbing.

It also allows the app’s accent colours and personalizes the icons according to your liking and preferences. The total amount of customizations it provides is immense, and you can change the menu bar colours, borders, and even the slightest of details in the shade of the drop-down that highlights the graphs and other information. The interface highlights how changing the colours will affect the app and the menu bar, and with this much customization at hand, iStat Menus becomes the go-to option for a distraction-free and clean activity-monitoring app.

Performance Monitoring

As we have already discussed, the CPU and GPU tab helps you manage your processes and activities. Finally, the memory tab enables you to manage RAM consumption to improve performance and responsiveness all around the UI.

However, this is the basic that iStat Menus is capable of. iStat Menus can also display various graphs and infographics of your workload so that you can manage and learn about your usage and ample insight on how your apps behave. The app is also quite a haven for developers and can help them check and stress test their app performance and requirements on the Mac.

Notifications and Weather Information

Finally, iStat Menus also provides many customization options for what notifications you want to receive. The notification feature allows you to have reports every time your Mac hits a specific condition or issue. For example, it helps you by notifying if your Mac heats up, overuses the CPU, or saturates the memory with background apps.

It also features a built-in weather information widget to help you monitor your area’s current and upcoming weather condition. However, some of the weather tool features are locked behind a paid upgrade which is a bummer considering it is handy. The module displays the daily forecast along with the maximum and minimum temperature based on your preferred units. Oh, and if you are a weather buff, you also get to see the dew point, wind’s speed and direction.

Oh, and the cherry on the cake is that the custom notifications settings and preferences also work with the weather module, which means if you are working on your Mac and the weather suddenly turns grey and stormy, a message pops up right away notifying you of the condition.

Pros and Cons of using iStat Menus

Pros

• It is feature-rich and can help you monitor a lot of stuff at once
• It has a menu integration system that displays data directly on every screen
• You can also set custom notifications, and it has a lot of customization settings for personalization

Cons

• The Pro package can get a little pricy
• Weather Information and Notifications can feel a little cluttered
• The design can feel a little dated and doesn’t fit in with the new macOS Big Sur menu icon set

In Short, iStat Menus is the perfect app if you want to monitor all your process activity and keep your device optimized for best performance at all times. In addition, it helps save battery and improves responsiveness across the UI.

Also great: iStatistica Pro for Mac

Pricing: Free – Trial Version with limited features, $5.99 – Full Package

iStatistica Pro is an excellent alternative for iStat Menus, but it lacks the customization options that iStat Menus provide. It also includes a widget and a status bar menu that comes in handly while displaying a lot of information at once. So, if you don’t need the customization settings and don’t mind downloading a plugin for additional features, then, by all means, get iStatistica Pro.

The full version for iStatistica Pro has a lot of features and can help you manage the following:

• A complete System Monitor dashboard
• Bluetooth device battery information
• Sensors and Fans data
• Network activity monitoring
• Remote access through your iPhone
• Widgets and instant notifications

How can you use iStatistica Pro to manage processes?

iStatistica Pro has many monitoring features to help you manage your apps to the fans on your Mac. So, how do you so?

• Well, Firstly, you need to download and install the app
• Secondly, you would be greeted with a homepage that would allow you to access all your data on a single screen

Note: You can access all the device information on a single screen which can be a little clunky, but after a bit of experience, you would easily be able to navigate the entire UI and understand all the information.

App Management

App Management is simple and straightforward, with the main features directly being listed on the app’s home page. Here you can manage all the settings and even kill misbehaving or performance hogging apps running in the foreground or the background. You also get a detailed analysis report for all the performance hits and CPU and Memory utilization. Finally, it has graphs and other information related to battery and temperature that can help you better analyze and monitor your Mac apps. We also enjoy the fact that you can manage all the tasks under the same section, and it proves helpful in killing apps and maintain good performance overall. Oh, and did we mention it also has fan controls and temperature monitoring capabilities for all the CPU cores, GPU and other inbuilt hardware.

Alerts and Notifications

Alert and Notifications are a big part of monitoring and getting crucial information right at your fingertips, and iStatistica Pro has a robust alert management system that allows you to get notifications regarding the CPU utilization limit and memory utilization limit instantly notify you if your device hits that threshold. Finally, you also get a companion app for your iPhone, and it lets you remotely access all the monitoring data right on your phone. It also has webhook commands and additional notification plugins, but it can get a little confusing for beginners, so try that when you get comfortable using the app.

Widgets

Widgets are a big thing for macOS, and iStatistica makes full use of them. It has multiple widgets that go on your home screen and provide you with crucial information regarding app, CPU and memory utilization. It also helps track your storage data and network connectivity with download and upload speeds for the entire time you’re using your device. You can also add additional devices for monitoring, such as your Bluetooth connected Apple Watch and headphones for easier access and battery management on the home screen.

Pros and Cons of using iStatistica Pro

Pros

• Easy and seamless widget integration
• Powerful alerts and notification options
• A clubbed intuitive app management and data monitoring system

Cons

• The initial experience using the app may feel a little clunky
• Most features are locked behind a payment

Other alternatives

MenuBar Stats ($4.99) – MenuBar Stats helps you monitor the performance of your Mac in a clean, sleek and straightforward interface. It has been ‘completely re-written from the ground’ and comes with modules such as CPU, disk, network, Bluetooth, fan, and more. Each of these modules can be accessed front he menu bar and/or the notification center of your Mac OS.

TG Pro ($10) – TG Pro is a diagnostics app that works the best with monitoring temperature and fan data. However, it also has system monitoring capabilities with CPU, GPU, Battery and storage information that helps you maintain your device with ease. Finally, it is the only app on the list that can accurately display all the temperature information for the new M1 Macs, including any older gen models.

XRG for Mac (free) – Talking about open sources, XRG for Mac is a functional system monitor tool that you could try if you do want to monitor your Mac’s performance for free. The UI is complex and needs a lot of time to get used to, and it also looks like something straight out of the 2000s era. This app lets you monitor your CPU and GPU activity, memory usage, machine temperature, battery status, network activity, disk I/O, stock market data, and current weather.

App Tamer ($14.95) – helps you tame the apps that hog your CPU. It’s a lightweight menu bar utility with the ability to detect the average percentage of your processor(s) being used by each app, or access a graphical history or your CPU usage.

Monity ($4.99) – Monity is an excellent app for those who want infographics to work as a widget. It is available in the ‘Today View’ section of your macOS UI and can oversee various device hardware components. Monity does not have menu bars and displays information straight through the widget without cluttering your menubar workspace. The app comes in fifteen languages and can be purchased from the app store for $4.99.

coconutBattery3 ($12) – coconutBattery has been around the battery monitoring space since 2005 and does a fine job displaying the health of your Mac’s battery. It also comes with a companion app for your iPad and iPhone to track and manage their batteries as well. However, it is strictly a battery-monitoring app and cannot work as a fully functional activity manager.

SMART Utility ($25) – All new Macs come with faster SSDs with high data transfer speeds and fantastic read and write rates, sometimes leading to drive management issues. SMART Utility is built to keep track of the health of all your drives and to diagnose any problem that may arise. It can also get information such as drive temperature, capacity, and health, making it great for Disk Utility software.

MenuMeters (free) – Finally, taking a look at MenuMeters, which looks like a simple Aciitiivty manager application but can get seriously complex and feature-rich with use. It has unique features and customization options and details every activity and process with graphs and memory colours.

FAQs

iStat Menus vs iStatistica Pro?

iStat Menus is a great Activity Monitoring application, and compared to iStatistica Pro can be a lot feature-rich. So, we would recommend you to stick with iStat Menus as it is impressive with what it does and is lightweight enough not to be a problem with the performance. See the detailed comparison here.

Why is my MacBook Pro so hot?

There can be multiple reasons for your MacBook Pro getting so hot, but the primary one is that it’s being stressed with all the performance demands from applications and tasks. So, a quick fix is to use an Activity Monitoring app to identify the most demanding app and terminate it for your device to cool down and regain all the performance is lost.

What should the CPU usage percentage be for my Mac?

There is no set rule for what CPU usage percentage should be good for your Mac, but anything over 80% usage should be a cause for concern, and generally, you should max out the CPU at around 70-80% load and not more.

How to fix kernel_task CPU usage on Big Sur?

kernel_task is a variety of low-level processes that allow your computer to work and is a part of macOS. It won’t generally concern you, but it can sometimes be the biggest culprit of slowing down your Mac with utilizing the CPU to the max. However, you can fix this by restarting your Mac and updating it to the latest software update available.

How to get CPU temperature for the new M1 Macs?

The new M1 Macs aren’t compatible with most apps for temperature monitoring, but TG Pro works perfectly. So, you can download TG Pro from the link above and monitor your M1 Mac without and compatibility issues.

Before you go

After spending over 20 years working with Macs, both old and new, there’s a premium tool I think would be useful to every Mac owner who is experiencing performance issues.

CleanMyMac X is highest rated all-round cleaning app, it can quickly diagnose and solve a whole plethora of common (but sometimes tedious to fix) issues at the click of a button. It also just happens to make it very easy to free up disk space on your Mac by identifying junk files and allowing you to get rid of them with a click, so Download CleanMyMac X to get your Mac back up to speed today.

Keeping track of everything happening on your operating systems may sound daunting, but the right software allows you to monitor and manage every element and layer of your IT environment. Managing large enterprises and systems means sometimes things just get overloaded and fail. It’s impossible to prevent errors or issues, but you can keep a close eye on your network to troubleshoot as efficiently as possible.

Many businesses provide a guaranteed uptime to their customers and maintaining this isn’t just a matter of keeping promises. Businesses unable to meet their service-level agreements or keep things running smoothly can suffer lost trust from customers, lost revenue, and lost contracts if a customer has a bad experience.

Using an effective and comprehensive tool with good reporting features, alerting abilities, and uptime trackers will help you ensure service levels are met most of the time, and problems don’t affect your end users. By checking measurements constantly and preventing smaller problems from getting out of control, operating system monitoring tools go a long way toward minimizing overall failures and shutdowns of IT environments.

Mac Os System Monitor

What Operating Systems Should Be Monitored?

You might be dealing with several operating systems in your enterprise, and most have tools purpose-built for monitoring them. When it comes to matching your OS with system monitoring software, Linux, Windows, Mac, and Unix each benefit from a range of options. If you’re using a more obscure operating system, you might not have appropriate tools at your disposal.

You’ll likely have luck finding a high-quality, enterprise-level OS monitor if you’re using one of the following systems:

• Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10
• Windows Server 2008, Server 2012, Server 2016
• Windows Management Instrumentation
• Mac Os X
• Unix
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu Server, Debian, and Fedora

What Should an OS Monitor Measure?

Before you install operating system monitoring software, you need to have a clear idea of the metrics you can and should monitor. These can give you key clues about the performance and health of your system.

• CPU utilization: Depending on which processes are running, your CPU consumption will be higher or lower: a lot of process means a lot of CPU use. If a process has an error and ends up in a hung state, it’ll keep running even when you think you’ve closed the related program. This can keep the CPU running unexpectedly, or could increase CPU usage past a typical point, leading to overheating.
• Network performance: Various aspects of your network can impact operating system performance for end users. This includes faulty network hardware, viruses or malware in the network, incorrect configurations, and protocol overloads or failures. If network bandwidth is high, this can affect all your network traffic and may cause applications or systems to run slowly.
• Memory: If you’re using too much memory at one time, it can affect your operating system, with performance issues or crashes causing major problems.
• Disk drives: If the physical disks you’re accessing for storage are too full, you can end up with high response times whenever you try to retrieve or save data. This can have a big impact on how all of your applications work (read more about checking hard drive health here).
• Events: With all operating systems, you need to monitor event logs, as this is a major factor in keeping your network and infrastructure secure. Unusual event logs or a sudden spike in logs can indicate an error or a network breach.
• OS services: For all operating systems, critical services run in the background—e.g., Windows Active Directory. If one of these services malfunctions or stops working, your whole operating system can stop working as expected.

OS Monitoring Best Practices

Before you start monitoring your operating systems, you need to ensure you have a clear understanding of the best practices involved. You could use the highest-quality OS tools in the world and still not get much out of them if you were using them incorrectly or weren’t monitoring the relevant metrics.

Below are eight key best practices to follow:

1. Test configuration and rollout. Before you set up your monitoring system for your entire business, you need to test your configuration on a small number of devices to make sure everything is operating correctly. Have a set rollout process, during which you test changes and problems to see how the monitoring software reacts. Once you feel certain the tool is working as expected and is configured correctly, you can go ahead and roll it out business-wide.
2. Set baselines. Once you have your software set up, you need to monitor your systems to set baselines. Assuming no incidents during this time, the measurements you get will likely serve as a clear and accurate baseline for general operating system behavior. You can use these baselines later to detect security or OS health issues.
3. Commit to constant monitoring. To get accurate measurements and spot problems clearly and quickly, you need to be monitoring your operating systems constantly. This will help you identify issues as they arise and build a bigger picture of more complex issues, such as potential blind SQL injections or DDoS attacks.
4. Implement comprehensive security. The next step is to ensure your system monitoring software is set up as part of a larger, comprehensive security approach. This should include firewalls, network protection, and anti-malware software. OS monitoring software can form part of a system for security, but generally you should have other tools set up too.
5. Set up alerts. Your alerts should be set up to focus on the main problems that are likely risks to your business and major hardware issues or declines in OS or hardware health. You can also obtain lists and repositories of common viruses and malware and set up alerts if your system shows any indicators of these issues. Configure OS tools to alert you only to the most necessary data to avoid being overwhelmed.
6. Have an escalation plan. Within your business, you need to have escalation processes in place to pass issues on to the relevant people. This boosts the productivity of your team and stops your end users needing to go through an entire chain of people who cannot help them before their problem is solved.
7. Complete audits and reports. If you deal with any sensitive data your users access through your operating systems or servers, you need to regularly complete compliance audits to ensure everything is operating as expected. In addition, you should be examining reports from your software regularly to check your configuration is correct, and you haven’t missed any vital alerts.
8. Conduct regular reviews. Finally, your configuration, data collection, and monitoring setup should be reviewed frequently, to ensure it’s still working in the most suitable way for your business plans, your risk factors, and your needs.

Best System Monitoring Software

Now I’ll get into my picks for the best monitor program. In operating system contexts today, you need something comprehensive to ensure hybrid infrastructures and complex networks are completely covered. Most of the OS tools on my list provide free trials, so you can try a few to determine which one best suits your needs.

This guide focuses on helping you to identify the best Windows system monitor tool. If you need Mac system monitoring tools, some of these are compatible, while others are Linux or Windows only.

My top choice for operating system monitoring software is SolarWinds^® Server & Application Monitor (SAM). In monitoring servers and applications, SAM looks at the metrics discussed above as factors with an impact on an operating system’s ability to function.

For example, SAM can monitor Windows and Unix servers and their physical health, including checking on disk capacity, measuring CPU utilization, and checking whether there’s sufficient virtual memory for the tasks you’re trying to perform. When tracked, these physical metrics can give clues as to why your workstation or server operating system may not be functioning as expected. Especially with historical data, you can more easily see when something is operating outside normal boundaries and resolve it quickly.

SAM includes specific measuring tools and templates for looking at Windows performance, such as page file usage, processor time, pages per second, and disk queue length. This makes it possible to spot rogue processes and stop them before they affect productivity too much. In addition, it can monitor Windows network load balancing, print service, remote desktop service, FTP service, and update service.

SAM’s hardware health monitoring utilities are also robust. They can look at the drivers and firmware you have installed and check hard drive performance, hosted virtual machines, network interfaces, processors, what version of Windows you’re running, and which updates have been applied. Moreover, SAM helps you determine whether system slowdowns are stemming from one greedy or malfunctioning application, or whether the issue originates in your network infrastructure.

Windows is just one of the operating systems SAM can monitor. The tool also includes out-of-the-box templates for Unix and AIX, Solaris, and HP-UX environments. In addition, it has templates for managing various Linux distributions, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Ubuntu Server, Debian, and Fedora. With this kind of broad applicability, you can use SAM for numerous operating systems, including networks or environments with different operating systems for different tasks. All this information can be displayed in one easy-to-use dashboard, with multiple tabs for switching between different pieces of relevant information.

You can try the full version of SAM free for 30 days.

Network Performance Monitor (NPM) is another great tool from SolarWinds. Any of the devices connected to your network need to be monitored by a network monitoring tool, because what you might think is a problem with your operating system or physical hardware could be a problem with bandwidth or a network slowdown—especially if you use centralized file storage systems accessed through a LAN or WAN. SolarWinds NPM can map your entire network, including all your devices and application dependencies, and provide you with a clear picture of your network topology. This can help you understand how one device can affect another, along with your risk factors if one device or operating system becomes infected with malware.

NPM includes LAN and WAN monitoring and optimization tools to ensure everything is functioning properly, and to help you improve your setup if something isn’t running as well as it could. It includes network uptime and availability tools, so you can pinpoint network spikes and preempt them if necessary. By continuously monitoring all network devices for faults, availability, and performance, you can improve troubleshooting efforts and set alerts to trigger when performance thresholds are met. When troubleshooting an issue for an end user, you want answers fast, and ideally before productivity goes down. These availability tools enable you to quickly determine whether network problems are behind the issue at hand.

Other key features include Wi-Fi analysis, which helps determine whether a device is simply in a low-access zone or whether there are critical issues with Wi-Fi devices, firewalls, or load balancers in your network. Many SolarWinds tools are part of the Orion^® Platform, and as such can be used individually or in conjunction with each other. This allows you to mix and match as necessary or choose only the most critical tools to your setup. In combination with other tools, NPM can help you gain a full picture of your operating system and IT environment health, performance, and availability.

Like SAM, NPM has a 30-day free trial available.

ManageEngine OpManager brings together a range of features in one package. It includes network monitoring, server management, and tools for dealing with fault and performance issues.

Tracking server resource usage can reveal the source of problems within your operating system. OpManager can keep tabs on your CPU usage, memory consumption, I/O, network, disk usage, and processes, to determine where physical health issues lie. Within CPU usage, for example, it can measure utilization, speed, idle time, and processor time. In addition, OpManager monitors Windows services to check everything is functioning correctly, with a significant amount of this monitoring done out-of-the-box. It processes Windows event logs to check for security breaches, and monitors guest operating systems hosted virtually to ensure they’re functioning correctly.

OpManager, like SolarWinds NPM, includes network monitoring tools for determining whether poor operating system performance is the result of bandwidth or network component issues. It also monitors your WAN and LAN closely to check for network performance issues and reliability. Each of these metrics can be measured over the long term to set historical benchmarks, and you can establish alerts to let you know when an issue has occurred.

Several add-ons and plugins are available for use with OpManager, including plugins for network traffic analysis, network configuration, application performance management, and firewall management.

You can access a free trial of OpManager for 30 days, or you can download the free version with limited features.

The next tool on my list is Paessler PRTG. It has several user interfaces, including the desktop app, a web interface, and apps for both iOS and Android. This means you can access the PRTG features wherever you are, and you can also use multiple interfaces simultaneously.

PRTG has flexible and easy-to-use alerting you can use through your normal client, or through SMS and email if you prefer. You can schedule alerts and set up systems, so you receive high-priority alerts at your preferred times. If you don’t want to receive floods of alerts when an issue occurs, dependencies and acknowledging can be used to streamline the alerting system.

Mac System Monitor Widget Free

One of the cool things about PRTG is its interactive and good-looking graphics and maps, as well as various dashboards to show live status information. You can create maps of your entire network and all your devices with the tool’s map designer. The map designer also allows you to use various map objects to display the status of devices, so you can get a full picture of your network layout and health.

You can use PRTG for distributed networks, with the ability to apply remote probes in different geographic locations. You can also spread the monitoring load by spreading probes out as much as you like. PRTG comes with a set of reporting capabilities, and you can request reports on demand or be provided with regular reports depending on your needs.

PRTG offers a 30-day free trial.

Quest Foglight is another good example of OS monitoring software. It provides monitoring across physical, virtual, and cloud environments, with the aim of serving as a complete monitoring service. It can monitor physical operating systems and virtual ones, and can help monitor VMware, Hyper-V, Azure, and AWS along with physical servers and the operating systems they use.

System Monitor Mac Free Downloads

There are multiple versions of Foglight. Which one you choose will depend on whether you want to primarily monitor cloud environments with virtual desktops or you’re looking more at a server or database monitoring solution. Whether you use Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Cassandra, Foglight can provide monitoring and performance optimization. It keeps an eye on every application, database, network device, and server tied in to your operating systems and shows you performance metrics for your entire IT environment in a centralized location with multiple dashboards.

Like other tools, Foglight measures storage capacity trends, top I/O users, memory availability and consumption, top system users, and CPU utilization. Keeping track of these metrics helps ensure your operating systems and hosts are under control and problems are spotted as early as possible.

Foglight is available as a 30-day free trial.

The final tool I want to talk about is Nagios XI. Nagios has a powerful engine designed for IT infrastructure and systems monitoring, with a high degree of scalability as your network grows. It provides several dashboards, with centralized information, so you can get a clear overview of your entire system at a glance. You can highly customize the GUI with mix-and-match layout and design preferences on a per-user basis, which helps make this tool your own.

Nagios includes infrastructure management and mapping, giving you a clear picture of network connections and dependencies potentially affecting the performance of any individual workstation or device. It also carefully monitors infrastructure metrics pertaining to applications, services, operating systems, and network protocols.

Nagios XI offers a free trial, good for 60 days. You can also access an online demo.

How to Choose the Best System Monitoring Software

There’s no shortage of good-quality operating system monitoring software on the market. Hopefully after reading this guide, you’re equipped to make an informed decision, accounting for your operating system and organizational priorities. My top pick is SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor. It provides a quick and easy setup for many useful features, which together enable you to consistently and comprehensively monitor your operating systems and troubleshoot issues well before they affect your end users. By taking advantage of the free trial, you can test the full software to see if it works for you.