ptop — Pate's top

A copy of vtop, rewritten in Rust.

I like vtop. I just wanted a more performant version that works exactly the same, so I built ptop, short for Pate's top. Same idea: dotted CPU and memory history, the process list, familiar controls, and all 12 themes. Rust under the hood.

Matching vtop's look and behavior is the goal. The intentional differences are ptop branding, a link-free footer, and manual updates; see compatibility and measurement for the tested coverage and remaining limits.

Read the story: ptop, a vtop alternative in Rust. Compare the options: htop vs btop vs vtop vs ptop, with features, local measurements, and a reproducible benchmark.

Preview rendered by ptop from synthetic demonstration data. Font appearance depends on your terminal.

• CPU and memory history in a compact terminal view.
• Process grouping, CPU/memory sorting, and keyboard or mouse navigation.
• Twelve bundled themes, with no runtime asset downloads.
• Native execution and explicit, manual updates.

ptop runs on macOS and Linux. Ubuntu builds, compatibility checks, and live-terminal tests run in CI alongside macOS.

Install and run

macOS: prebuilt npm package

For Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later:

npm install -g @patebryant/ptop
ptop

The npm package runs the native executable directly—no resident Node wrapper, install-time download, or Rust toolchain required. Its prebuilt binary is currently macOS ARM64 only; Linux uses the source installation below.

Linux: build from source

With Rust 1.92.0 installed and the usual Linux tools (ps, free, hostname, and killall) available:

cargo install --git https://github.com/patebry/ptop --locked
ptop

The Linux sensor implementation reads CPU data from /proc/stat and uses Linux process and memory tools. Ubuntu is tested in CI; other distributions and CPU architectures have not all been verified. Intel Mac source builds are not yet verified either.

Press q to quit. Other examples:

ptop -t nord
ptop --no-mouse
ptop --fix

Ptop uses its own name and a link-free footer. Sensor arithmetic retains vtop's compatibility behavior by default; --fix corrects its macOS memory arithmetic. The native binary bundles all themes and works independently of this checkout.

Controls

• j / k: move selection; g / G: first / last process.
• c / m: sort by CPU / memory.
• h / l: change graph zoom.
• Ctrl-d: half-page down; Ctrl-b / Ctrl-f: page up / down.
• H / M / L: top / middle / bottom of the visible list.
• Mouse click: select; wheel: move two rows.
• dd: terminate the selected command's processes, as in vtop.
• u / Ctrl-u: exit cleanly and show the manual npm update command.

Normal ptop never checks npm in the background and never invokes sudo to update. Run npm install -g @patebryant/ptop when you want to update it.

Build and verify

Use Rust 1.92.0 for release builds, plus Node 22+ and Python 3 for the test harness.

cargo build --locked --release
./target/release/ptop
cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --locked
npm test

npm test builds and packs the native executable, inspects the actual archive, installs it into a temporary prefix, checks its hash and permissions, and tests its installed terminal behavior. npm pack creates the release tarball. Package contents are restricted to the executable, manifest, README, referenced docs/image, and licenses.

Compatibility and measurement

The reference is vtop 0.6.1. Ninety fixture frames are compared against the actual upstream renderer; one additional frame checks ptop branding. CLI, input, sensor timing, live color-state replay, terminal restoration, and updater tests provide separate evidence. This is finite test coverage, not a universal visual or performance guarantee.

--vtop-parity is an explicit reference-testing mode. It restores the predecessor collectors, name, footer and updater, including its npm/sudo behavior on the update key. Use normal ptop for the native package experience.

On macOS, normal ptop reads process RSS directly where permitted and asks the system ps only for protected processes. It preserves vtop's memory calculation and 200 ms sampling cadence; the process-list collector is unchanged. Incomplete native results fall back to the original collector. A custom ps on PATH also selects the original collector.

Use the benchmark instructions to run controlled comparisons on your machine. CPU measurements include reaped sensor children; sampled RSS is the monitor's own memory, not total process-tree memory.

The 0.1.3 collector evaluation measured 68–71% less total CPU than 0.1.2 on one Mac, at unchanged sensor cadences. The report includes all runs, memory warmup, compatibility checks, and limitations.

Four-tool measurements compare ptop 0.1.2, vtop, htop, and btop at a common requested UI refresh interval. Their features and internal sensor polling differ; this is not identical work.

Published 0.1.0 results include three matched pairs, per-run variability, and the complete measurement data.

Historical results record an earlier binary and are not performance claims for the current release. Rust alone does not establish a speedup; terminal size, process count, update interval, and host load matter.

Credits and license

MIT licensed. Ptop adapts behavior and themes from vtop, with rendering conventions from blessed and drawille. Original copyright notices, Unicode notices, Rust dependency licenses, and standard-library notices are included in licenses/ and in the npm package.