50 Mac Essentials #17: iStat Menus

By

20101028-istat.jpg

There are some people who simply don’t care what their computer is doing in the background; and there are others who can’t live without that kind of information.

For that second group of people, iStat Menus is a no-brainer.

Version 3 brought in a number of important changes to this much-respected application. The first was that it became a stand-alone app in its own right, the second was that it was no longer free. That might have upset a lot of people, but the price for the new app is a very reasonable and affordable £16 – which, if system resources mean that much to you, isn’t too much to pay.

You get a lot for your money. There isn’t much happening inside your computer that iStat Menus can’t show you in one way or another. It comes with loads of widgets, each one dedicated to a particular dataset. One for CPU, one for Date & Time, and so on. But inside each one there are loads of options. You can choose how the data will be displayed, how much space you’ll allow it on your Menu Bar, what sort of icon it will have. You get an enormous amount of flexibility, so you can make iStat Menus do exactly what you want it to do.

If you’re just curious about your Mac’s system performance, you can get a lot of this information from the built-in Activity Monitor app. But iStat Menus offers so much more, and in a far more attractive package. For occasional peeks under the hood, stick with Activity Monitor. But if your curiosity extends any further than that, $16 spent on iStat Menus will be $16 well spent.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.