alexx855/better-resource-monitor

Better Resource Monitor is a lightweight menu bar utility for tracking macOS performance metrics in real time. Built with Rust and Tauri, it gives you a quick look at CPU, memory, GPU, disk, and network usage without opening Activity Monitor or cluttering your screen.

If you like the visibility of tools like iStat Menus or Stats but want something lighter, this is a solid pick. It runs sandboxed from the Mac App Store or GitHub without requiring root privileges or background helper daemons. For GPU monitoring, it sticks to public Apple APIs, and the app maintains a footprint under 15 MB of RAM while using minimal CPU overhead.

It is completely offline with zero telemetry or network calls. For Mac users who want basic, clean system stats on their menu bar with virtually no impact on battery life, it does the job cleanly.

Better Resource Monitor presents itself very well: a lightweight macOS menu bar monitor for CPU, memory, GPU, and network usage, with a clear focus on low overhead, no telemetry, no admin privileges, and App Store availability. The README is not just technical; it explains the product positioning against iStat Menus, Stats, and Eul, which helps users understand what the app is and is not trying to be. The implementation choices support the positioning: Tauri v2, Rust, sysinfo with App Store-compatible features, tray-icon support, autostart, single-instance handling, store persistence, optimized release profile settings, and compatibility notes for Intel and Apple Silicon on macOS Ventura or newer. Simulating usage, I’d expect this to be the kind of tool you install, set to launch at login, and forget about until CPU, memory, GPU, or network activity looks unusual. That quietness is a real product strength. The main improvement is transparency around measurement methodology. The comparison table lists impressive numbers like memory footprint, CPU impact, and app size, but users would trust them more with a repeatable benchmark script or methodology page. I’d also surface screenshots of configuration panels and add more detail about which GPU metrics are available on which macOS versions/hardware, because system monitoring accuracy depends heavily on platform APIs.