v2.0.0 — Now on iPhone & iPad

Your devices' vitals,
at a glance.

Blip is a featherlight system monitor for Mac, iPhone, and iPad — CPU, memory, disk, GPU, network, battery, and a real benchmark. Beautiful charts, tiny footprint, completely free.

Download View Source
CPU 19%
User
12%
System
7%
Idle
81%
P-Cores
10
E-Cores
4
Logical
14
Load 1m
5.48
5m
5.09
15m
5.32
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
Usage over time
100%50%0%
Top Processes
Safari
8.2%
WindowServer
5.4%
Slack
4.1%
Spotify
2.4%
Mail
1.1%
Memory 42%
Total48 GB
App Memory15.42 GB
Wired3.47 GB
Compressed1.12 GB
Memory Used20.01 GB
Cached Files11.79 GB
Free27.99 GB
Swap UsedZero KB
Pressure
Normal
Usage over time
100%50%0%
Top Processes
Safari
1.4 GB
Slack
890 MB
Spotify
620 MB
Mail
340 MB
Finder
210 MB
Disk Verified
↓ Read
1 KB/s
↑ Write
261 KB/s
Total Read
318.1 GB
Total Written
275.2 GB
Read / Write over time
6.0 MB/s3.0 MB/s0 B/s
Read
Write
Macintosh HD 65%
2.59 TB used1.41 TB free
Speed Test ›
Testing: Macintosh HD · 1 GB
Run Test
Network
↓ Download
7 KB/s
↑ Upload
3 KB/s
WAN Ping
3 ms
Router Ping
3 ms
Total Down
3.9 GB
Total Up
3.6 GB
Bandwidth over time
4.0 MB/s2.0 MB/s0 B/s
Down
Up
Active Interfaces
Wi-Fi(en0)
IPv4192.168.1.42 ⎘
IPv6fe80::1a2b:3c4d:5e6f ⎘
MACAA:BB:CC:11:22:33 ⎘
Router192.168.1.1 ⎘
WAN IPTap to reveal
› Traceroute / MTR
› Speed Test
Server: OpenSpeedTest
Run Test
GPU 67%
RendererApple M4 Pro
GPU Cores20
Utilization67%
Usage over time
100%50%0%
Thermal Nominal
System is running within normal thermal limits.
Temperatures
CPU42°C
GPU38°C
Fans
Left Fan1200 RPM
0 RPM6200 RPM
Right Fan1180 RPM
0 RPM6200 RPM
Battery 100%
StatusCharging
SourceAC Power
Health98%
ConditionNormal
Cycle Count42
Temperature34.2°C
Menu Bar Styles
Category Colors

Interactive demo — double-click the menu bar to cycle styles. Some differences may be present in the installed native Mac app.

Now on iPhone & iPad

One free app across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Live device cards with drill-in details, Blip Bench with Neural Engine scoring, graded speed tests, ping and traceroute with an offline hop map, disk speed tests, widgets, and Shortcuts.

Blip for iPhone — live device stats Blip for iPad — device overview Blip for iPhone — traceroute with hop map

🔥 Blip Bench, everywhere

CPU, memory, GPU, and Neural Engine throughput in fixed reference units — one scale for every Mac, iPhone, and iPad running Blip, with a sustained phase that measures thermal throttling.

📈 Speed tests with grades

Download and upload draw as separate curves, latency is measured idle and under load, and every result is graded per activity — from video calls to cloud gaming.

🗺 Network tools with a map

Ping and traceroute with per-hop latency and an offline GeoIP map of the route. The location database downloads once; lookups never leave the device.

📱 Widgets & Shortcuts

Bench score, storage, and your last speed test on the Home Screen — each stamped with its age — plus Shortcuts to automate benchmarks, speed tests, and stats snapshots.

New in v2.0.0

Blip comes to iPhone and iPad — and Blip Bench scores every device on one scale, Neural Engine included.

⚙️ Shortcuts & App Intents

Eight actions make Blip's monitoring and diagnostics scriptable from the Shortcuts app and Spotlight. Chain live metrics into your own automations — press ▶️ to run this one.

Drive Health Check
Get SSD Life Remaining from Blip 14 %
If Metric Value is less than 20
Show notification SSD wearing out
Blip
Macintosh HD is at 14% SSD life — plan a replacement.
ALL EIGHT ACTIONS
Get System Metric Run Drive Speed Test Run Network Speed Test Run Traceroute Stop Traceroute Open Traceroute Map Get Blip Setting Set Blip Setting
“Run a drive speed test in Blip”
Five zero-setup App Shortcut phrases — say them to Siri or type them into Spotlight, no setup required.

📊 Get System Metric — a 37-metric catalog

One action exposes every number Blip tracks as a chainable result, searchable right in Shortcuts — try the search below. The seven charted metrics also offer average / min / max over Blip's in-memory ~2-minute history.

37

⏱️ One-click, per-volume disk speed test

Every volume in the Disk panel now carries a gauge button that targets that drive and runs the uncached write/read + random-IOPS benchmark in one click — external drives included (the App Store build one-click-confirms access to them). Results land in the same history sparkline as the Disk panel's speed test. Click a gauge to try it.

Macintosh HD 65%
2.59 TB used1.41 TB free
Internal NVMe SSD
T7 Shield 42%
840 GB used1.16 TB free
External USB-C SSD
Time Machine 78%
10.9 TB used3.1 TB free
External USB hard drive
~2 MB
Binary size
0
Dependencies
~42 MB
Memory footprint
MIT
License

Everything you need, nothing you don't.

Blip monitors what matters and stays out of your way.

⚡

CPU Monitoring

Total and per-core usage, user/system/idle breakdown, load averages (1m/5m/15m), P-core and E-core counts. Accurate delta-based CPU per process with app icons.

🧠

Memory

App memory, wired, compressed breakdown matching Activity Monitor. Swap usage, cached files, kernel-level pressure indicator. Accurate phys_footprint memory per process.

💾

Disk

Space used and available for all mounted volumes. Real-time read/write speeds via IOKit with total data read/written since boot. Full S.M.A.R.T. drive health — SSD life remaining, drive temperature, lifetime bytes written, power-on hours and more, now including external USB/SATA SSDs. New in v1.5.0: a built-in disk speed test with live Writing…/Reading… phases, sequential write/read MB/s, random-read IOPS, history sparkline, and optional interval testing — benchmark the boot drive or any external volume — plus an I/O chart with Y-axis labels. New in v1.6.0: every volume row gets a gauge button that targets that drive and runs the benchmark in one click.

🌐

Network

Upload/download speeds with accurate 64-bit session totals, all active interfaces, WAN and router ping, IPv4/IPv6, MAC address, WAN IP reveal, VPN detection. New in v1.5.0: live Traceroute / MTR with per-hop loss & latency that fills in hop-by-hop — with a geolocation map (powered by an optional on-device database you download yourself, so hop locations never leave your Mac) that plots the route across the world — and a multi-gigabit speed test that runs against your own self-hosted OpenSpeedTest server (open-source, sanctioned, unlimited). Bandwidth chart with Y-axis labels.

⏻

Processes

Top CPU and memory consumers with real app icons, accurate delta-based CPU and phys_footprint memory. New in v1.5.0: hover any process to reveal a quit control — one click arms it, a second click terminates the process right from the panel.

💡

Optimization Advisor

New in v1.5.0: a dismissable “Suggestion” banner surfaces actionable advice to improve performance, health, and longevity — runaway-CPU apps, high memory pressure or heavy swap, thermal throttling, a nearly-full startup disk, S.M.A.R.T. warnings, low SSD life, and weak battery health. Highest-severity first; dismissed items stay hidden for 24 hours or until the condition worsens.

🎮

GPU

Apple Silicon GPU utilization percentage with renderer name. Historical usage chart shows GPU load over time with smooth monotone interpolation.

🔋

Battery & Fans

Charge level, health matching Settings app, battery condition, cycle count, temperature, charging status. Fan RPM with min/max ranges.

📊

Beautiful Charts

Historical sparklines for CPU, memory, and GPU. Bandwidth and disk I/O charts with auto-scaled Y-axis labels. Detail panels live-refresh as data changes.

🪶

Featherlight

~2 MB binary. Zero external dependencies. Polls every 2 seconds with efficient ring buffers. Shows its own memory usage in the footer.

🎨

Customizable

Category colors, monochrome, or custom color via picker. Optional utilization colorization. Two layouts (horizontal/stacked). Toggle individual items and labels. Launch at login.

⚙️

Shortcuts Automation

New in v1.6.0: automate Blip from the Shortcuts app. Get System Metric exposes 37 live metrics (CPU, memory, disk & S.M.A.R.T., GPU, network, battery, temps, fans, uptime) as chainable numbers — with average/min/max over the last two minutes for charted metrics. Run a drive speed test on any volume, run a network speed test, run or stop a traceroute and get an MTR summary, open the Traceroute Map, and read or change curated settings — all from your own workflows. Five zero-setup App Shortcut phrases work with Siri and Spotlight out of the box.

🔒

Private & Secure

Zero telemetry, zero tracking, zero analytics. Blip has no servers and never sends your data to us, and the traceroute map geolocates entirely on-device from an optional database you download yourself — no third-party lookup. The only network connections are ones you start: the speed test talks only to the OpenSpeedTest server you self-host, and WAN-IP reveal.

Support future development

Blip is free — no ads, no tracking, no subscription. If it earns a place on your Mac, you can help fund what comes next.

Sponsor on GitHub Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi

All the ways to support →

Questions & Answers

Does Blip work on Intel Macs?

Blip is built exclusively for Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4 and newer). It uses ARM64-specific optimizations and Apple Silicon IOKit interfaces for GPU and thermal monitoring.

What macOS version do I need?

macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later. Blip uses Swift Charts and other APIs introduced in macOS 14.

How much memory does Blip use?

Typically around 42 MB physical footprint. Blip shows its own memory usage in the popover footer so you can always check. The binary itself is around 2 MB.

Is it safe? Why does it need to run unsandboxed?

Blip needs to read hardware sensors (SMC for fans, IOKit for GPU/disk I/O, process list for top apps) which require unsandboxed access. The app is fully open source — you can audit every line of code, and every release is notarized by Apple. There is no telemetry or tracking of any kind — no analytics, no crash reporters, no network calls home. No server infrastructure is used or needed for Blip to work; everything runs entirely on your Mac. The app has been security audited to ensure the utmost care in being a safe app for use.

How does the hover detail panel work?

Hover over any row in the main popover to reveal a detailed sub-panel to the side — just like iStats Menus. It shows charts, breakdowns, and top processes for that category.

Can I customize what shows in the menu bar?

Yes. Open Settings (gear icon in the popover) and toggle individual items: CPU, Memory, Disk, Network dot, and labels. You can also set a custom accent color.

Is there an iPhone and iPad app?

Yes — Blip Stats 2.0 is one free app across Mac, iPhone, and iPad. The iOS app shows live device stats with drill-in details, runs Blip Bench (including the Neural Engine), tests network and disk speed, does ping and traceroute with an offline hop map, and ships Home Screen widgets and Shortcuts.

Is Blip really free?

Yes — on every platform. The Mac direct download, the Homebrew cask, the Mac App Store build, and the iPhone/iPad app are all free with no paid tier and nothing to unlock. If you'd like to support development, use the links above.

How do I build from source?

Clone the repo, install XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen), run xcodegen generate, then build with Xcode or xcodebuild. See the README for full instructions.

Try Blip today.

Open source, and built for Apple Silicon.

Download on the Mac App Store Download DMG View on GitHub

Optional: Download Blip Helper for fan speeds, temperatures, GPU utilization, disk I/O, battery health, and process monitoring when using the App Store version.