Enhanced IStat Menus: The Ultimate Upgrade in Mac System Monitoring

iStat Menus, a comprehensive system monitoring app for the Mac, has been overhauled and received new features. However, there are a few bugs and issues that haven’t been worked out yet.

Bumped to version 7.0, iStat Menus brings an overhauled interface with more theme options, various new icon graphs, a bunch of new menu bar options, and much more. iStat Menus lives in the macOS menu bar , and version 7 lets you display the number of GPU frames per second, the name of the current Wi-Fi network, and stacked labels. Enhancements for Apple silicon Macs include frequency monitoring and additional real-time sensor options with temperature, fan speed, voltage, current, and power stats. Developer Bjango underscores that fan speeds can now ramp up gradually, and you have complete control over the speed curve.

Improved CPU and GPU monitoring brings usage stats for individual cores, frequencies, uptime, temperature, memory usage, and more. Storage monitoring includes new information such as used and free space, per-app disk usage, and S.M.A.R.T. status monitoring.

The time menu now provides 7-day and 14-day rolling calendar modes, and the combined menu can now display anything in the menu bar, with more options in the dropdown menu. You can now have clocks in the menu bar, and world clocks now show sun and moon information for custom locations and can be named to distinguish them from one another easily. Weather stats are also more detailed than ever, and you can now set a custom location for weather anywhere in the world.

iStat Menus 7 can notify you about virtually anything; there are new alerts for CPU, GPU, memory, disks, network, sensors, battery, power, and weather events. You can even get reminded of daylight savings changes. There are also notable improvements for network monitoring (per-app bandwidth breakdown, history graphs, IP addresses, etc) and energy stats (new items for when the battery draining, charging, or fully charged).

However, as mentioned, some people have found the upgrade path from iStat Menus 6.0 to 7.0 far from perfect. For some, the old version persists and keeps asking for an upgrade. Others say iStat Menus 7.0 crashes intermittently or seems to have lost functionalities like per-core CPU activity, fewer clock customizations, manual CPU fan speed control, maintaining fans at a constant speed, etc. Anecdotal evidence shows that, yes, some people do experience issues after installing iStat Menus 7.0, but others do not. Developers are aware of these problems and should address them in future updates to the app.

iStat Menus is available on the App Store and as a direct download from the official website . The App Store version wasn’t updated at publication time, so keep that in mind. iStat Menus is also included in the $10/month Setapp subscription at no extra charge.

Otherwise, you’ll need to purchase a single-user license at $12 a pop, with a family license for up to six users priced at $16. A 14-day free trial is available to try out all the features and see how well the app works for you. If you already have an iStats Menu 6.0 license, downloading version 7 will upgrade the license and automatically apply discounted pricing.

Source: Bjango

Also read: