Htop

For the homotopy category of topological spaces, see hTop.
htop
Original author(s)Hisham Muhammad
Developer(s)Hisham Muhammad (2004-2019)
htop developer team (2020-present)
Initial releaseMay 2004; 20 years ago (2004-05)[1]
Stable release
3.3.0[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 10 January 2024
Repository
Written inC (ncurses library)
Operating systemLinux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, OpenIndiana
TypeProcess Viewer / System monitor
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later
Websitehtop.dev

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

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, swap and memory 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.[3] Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending signals to processes.

htop is written in the C programming language using the ncurses library. Its name is derived from the original author's first name, as a nod to pinfo,[4] an info-replacement program that does the same.[5]

Because system monitoring interfaces are not standardized among Unix-like 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.[6][7] Solaris/Illumos/OpenIndiana support was added in 2.2.0.

htop was forked by several developers as htop-dev,[8] and with support from the original author, the homepage was later redirected to a new domain.[9]

  1. ^ "GitHub - htop-dev/htop at 80f344559bba331d6daa2c913005e7eefddcf075". GitHub.
  2. ^ "Release 3.3.0". 10 January 2024. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  3. ^ "System Monitoring with htop". Archived from the original on 2018-06-18. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
  4. ^ "Pinfo - A lynx-style info and man reader". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
  5. ^ "htop FAQ". Archived from the original on January 21, 2014. Retrieved 2012-06-15.
  6. ^ "Going cross-platform: how htop was made portable - FOSDEM 2016". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2016-12-30.
  7. ^ "Htop - an interactive process viewer". Archived from the original on September 27, 2018. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  8. ^ "Htop forked to htop-dev, version 3.0.0 released with over 2 years of bug fixes and features | Lobsters". lobste.rs. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  9. ^ "hisham.hm/htop". Hisham Muhammad. Retrieved 2020-12-08.