SystemPulse - Native macOS System Monitor

[MaLd0n]

SystemPulse is a lightweight, native macOS system monitoring application designed to provide real-time hardware and system information without unnecessary background services, external dependencies, or cloud telemetry.

Built specifically for macOS, SystemPulse combines native Apple frameworks and low-level system APIs to display essential system information in a clean, responsive dashboard.

Main Features

• Real-time CPU monitoring

  • Total CPU usage

  • Per-core activity

  • Load average

  • CPU model and core information

  • CPU temperature

• GPU monitoring

  • GPU identification

  • Utilization when exposed by the driver

  • GPU temperature

  • Metal and IORegistry-based information

• Apple Silicon temperature support

  • M1 family

  • M2 family

  • M3 family

  • M4 family

  • M5 family

  • Additional thermal fallback for newer or unsupported Apple Silicon platforms

• Intel Mac support

  • Native AppleSMC temperature reading

  • CPU and GPU telemetry where available

• Memory monitoring

  • Used and available memory

  • Memory pressure

  • Swap information

• Storage monitoring

  • Volume usage

  • Available space

  • Storage statistics

• Network monitoring

  • Active interfaces

  • Upload/download activity

  • Native macOS network counters

  • No public IP lookup

• Process Explorer

  • CPU usage by process

  • Memory usage by process

  • Native libproc implementation

  • Fast process filtering

• Power information

  • Battery and power-source status where supported

• Live history graphs

  • CPU

  • GPU

  • Memory

  • Network

  • Other monitored resources

Native Temperature Monitoring

SystemPulse does not rely on external command-line utilities such as powermetrics.

Temperature monitoring is performed directly through native macOS interfaces, including:

• AppleSMC / IOKit

• IOAccelerator

• Apple Silicon thermal sensors

• HID thermal sensor fallback where required

The application validates sensor values before displaying them. If macOS or the hardware does not publish a valid sensor, SystemPulse reports “Not published” instead of generating or estimating a temperature.

Intel + Apple Silicon

SystemPulse is designed as a Universal macOS application, supporting both:

• x86_64

• arm64

Apple Silicon detection also accounts for execution through Rosetta, so the correct thermal monitoring path can still be selected when a universal build is launched under translation.

Privacy

SystemPulse is designed to work locally.

• No analytics

• No telemetry uploads

• No account required

• No cloud backend

• No public IP lookup

• No background helper required for normal monitoring

• No external monitoring service

System information remains on your Mac unless you explicitly export a snapshot.

Performance

The monitoring engine was designed to minimize unnecessary CPU and memory usage.

SystemPulse uses:

• Dedicated background queues for hardware providers

• Provider execution gates to prevent sampling backlog

• Bounded history buffers

• Cached hardware metadata

• Controlled UI update coalescing

• Native APIs instead of repeatedly launching shell commands

• Lazy thermal fallback queries

• Cached Apple Silicon HID sensor enumeration

The objective is simple: monitor the system without becoming a system load itself.

Light & Dark Mode

The interface automatically follows the selected macOS appearance and includes proper adaptive text and contrast handling for:

• System

• Light

• Dark

Release Information

This release includes extensive release-oriented auditing and fixes covering:

• Swift 6 concurrency compatibility

• Apple Silicon thermal monitoring

• Intel SMC monitoring

• CPU/GPU temperature handling

• Rosetta detection

• startup window stabilization

• Light/Dark appearance consistency

• IOKit/CoreFoundation ownership

• background task lifecycle

• provider scheduling

• bounded caches and history

• stricter SMC response validation

• release build configuration

The application is built with strict compiler warnings enabled and uses AD-HOC signing for distribution.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or newer

• Intel or Apple Silicon Mac

Sensor availability depends on the hardware, macOS version, firmware and what each device exposes through the operating system.

Download HERE

Download the latest SystemPulse release and run it directly on your Mac.

Feedback, hardware reports and sensor compatibility reports are welcome, especially from different generations of Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.