htop is an interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program

top A spinning top, or simply a top, is a toy with a squat body and a sharp point at the bottom, designed to be spun on its vertical axis, balancing on the tip due to the gyroscopic effect. Once set in motion, a top will usually wobble for a few ...

System monitor

It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. htop uses color and gives visual information about

processor Processor may refer to: Computing Hardware * Processor (computing) **Central processing unit (CPU), the hardware within a computer that executes a program *** Microprocessor, a central processing unit contained on a single integrated circuit (I ...

swap Swap or SWAP may refer to: Finance * Swap (finance), a derivative in which two parties agree to exchange one stream of cash flows against another * Barter Science and technology * Swap (computer programming), exchanging two variables in t ...

and

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

status. htop can also display the processes as a tree. Users often deploy htop in cases where Unix top does not provide enough information about the system's processes. htop is also popularly used interactively as a

system monitor A system monitor is a hardware or software component used to monitor system resources and performance in a computer system. Among the management issues regarding use of system monitoring tools are resource usage and privacy. Overview Software ...

. Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending

signals In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...

to processes. htop is written in the C programming language using the

ncurses ncurses (new curses) is a programming library providing an application programming interface (API) that allows the programmer to write text-based user interfaces (TUI) in a terminal-independent manner. It is a toolkit for developing "GUI-like" ...

library. Its name is derived from the original author's first name, as a nod to pinfo, an

info Info is shorthand for "information". It may also refer to: Computing * .info, a generic top-level domain * info:, a URI scheme for information assets with identifiers in public namespaces * info (Unix), a command used to view documentation produc ...

-replacement program that does the same. Because system monitoring interfaces are not standardized among

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating systems, much of htop's code must be rewritten for each operating system. Cross-platform, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Mac OS X, support was added in htop 2.0. Solaris/Illumos/OpenIndiana support added in 2.2.0. htop was forked by several developers as htop-dev and with support from the original author the homepage was later redirected to a new domain.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Htop, lcfirst=yes
htop Homepage
Free software programmed in C Software that uses ncurses System monitors Unix process- and task-management-related software

System monitor

See also

References

External links