Monity

Monity is intended for monitoring various system parameters. In this regard, the tool can display useful information, such as system usage, memory usage, network activity, battery status, disk usage, app usage, hardware temperature and fan speed.

It is so easy to use that I do not think anyone can have problems to use it, even if it is the first time.

Monity runs from the Notification Center, which makes it quite unobtrusive. It lets you browse through pages, each of them displaying a different group of parameters. Moreover, you can expand its dashboard to show more panels on a single page.

Luckily, the information is broken down into details. For instance, CPU system usage is displayed by processes and users. Memory usage, in turn, shows wired, active, inactive, compressed and free memory values. As to network activity, it is possible to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic as well as total bandwidth. In the case of battery, you can get useful information regarding current charge, time left, number of load cycles, etc. Good to know that the application allows unmounting disk volumes easily. Likewise, it provides data regarding used and free space. Similarly, the tool can get the required information from your machine’s sensors regarding temperature and fan speed. Finally, it is very useful to know which applications are using most system resources.

Compared with other similar tools, Monity’s main disadvantage is that it cannot show the requested information as graphs. Besides, you are not allowed to filter or break down the data any further.

In short, Monity is a valuable alternative to your system’s built-in system monitoring application as it gives you access to most of the information you need right from the Notification Center. The product can be purchased from the Mac App Store at a reasonable price. Additionally, there is an accompanying application called Monity Helper (downloadable from the developer’s site), which allows viewing detailed system info from inside Monity.