Index

• News
• Documents
• Description
• Features
• Themes
• Support and funding
• Prerequisites (Read this if you are having issues!)
• Screenshots
• Keybindings
• Installation Linux/macOS
• Compilation Linux
• Compilation macOS
• Compilation FreeBSD
• Compilation NetBSD
• Compilation OpenBSD
• Testing
• GPU compatibility
• Installing the snap
• Configurability
• License

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News

22 March 2026

Updated contributing guidlines for AI generated code:

• Submissions where any of the code is AI generated must be marked with [AI generated].

(When code is generated by prompting either directly to an LLM or through "comment prompting".)

• Not needed when AI suggestions is used in "autocomplete" mode only for boilerplate or other repetitive code.

• Failure to disclose the use of AI in a PR will result in a closed PR and deliberately trying to obfuscate the use of AI will result in your account getting blocked from contributing again.

• "Vibe coded" PR's where it seems like the author doesn't understand the generated code will be dismissed.

4 December 2025

Since there is a increasing amount of AI generated/assisted PR's, the following guidlines have been added to CONTRIBUTING.md:

• Submissions where the majority of the code is AI generated must be marked with [AI generated].

• "Vibe coded" PR's where it seems like the author doesn't understand the generated code will be dismissed.

22 September 2024

Btop release v1.4.0

Intel GPU support added, note that only GPU utilization, power usage and clock speed available to monitor. Thanks to @bjia56 for contributions.

NetBSD support added. Thanks to @fraggerfox for contributions.

See CHANGELOG.md and latest release for detailed list of new features, bug fixes and new themes.

7 January 2024

Btop release v1.3.0

Big release with GPU support added for Linux and platform support for OpenBSD. Big thanks to @romner-set (GPU support) and @joske (OpenBSD support) for contributions. And a multitude of bugfixes and small changes, see CHANGELOG.md and latest release for detailed list and attributions.

See news entry below for more information regarding GPU support.

25 November 2023

GPU monitoring added for Linux!

Compile from git main to try it out.

Use keys 5, 6, 7 and 0 to show/hide the gpu monitoring boxes. 5 = Gpu 1, 6 = Gpu 2, etc.

Gpu stats/graphs can also be displayed in the "Cpu box" (not as verbose), see the cpu options menu for info and configuration.

Note that the binaries provided on the release page (when released) and the continuous builds will not have gpu support enabled.

Because the GPU support relies on loading of dynamic gpu libraries, gpu support will not work when also static linking.

See Compilation Linux for more info on how to compile with gpu monitoring support.

Many thanks to @romner-set who wrote the vast majority of the implementation for GPU support.

Big update with version bump to 1.3 coming soon.

28 August 2022

First release of btop4win available at https://github.com/aristocratos/btop4win

More...

16 January 2022

Release v1.2.0 with FreeBSD support. No release binaries for FreeBSD provided as of yet.

Again a big thanks to @joske for his porting efforts!

Since compatibility with Linux, macOS and FreeBSD are done, the focus going forward will be on new features like GPU monitoring.

13 November 2021

Release v1.1.0 with macOS support. Binaries in continuous-build-macos are only x86 for now. macOS binaries + installer are included for both x86 and ARM64 (Apple Silicon) in the releases.

Big thank you to @joske who wrote the vast majority of the implementation!

30 October 2021

Work on the OSX [macOS] and FreeBSD branches, both initiated and mostly worked on by @joske, will likely be completed in the coming weeks. The OSX [macOS] branch has some memory leaks that needs to be sorted out and both have some issues with the processes cpu usage calculation and other smaller issues that needs fixing.

If you want to help out, test for bugs/fix bugs or just try out the branches:

macOS / OSX

# Install and use Homebrew or MacPorts package managers for easy dependency installation
brew install coreutils make gcc@11 lowdown
git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/btop.git
cd btop
git checkout OSX
gmake

FreeBSD

sudo pkg install gmake gcc11 coreutils git lowdown
git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/btop.git
cd btop
git checkout freebsd
gmake

Note that GNU make (gmake) is recommended but not required for macOS/OSX but it is required on FreeBSD.

6 October 2021

macOS development have been started by @joske, big thanks :) See branch OSX for current progress.

18 September 2021

The Linux version of btop++ is complete. Released as version 1.0.0

I will be providing statically compiled binaries for a range of architectures in every release for those having problems compiling.

For compilation GCC 11 is required.

Please report any bugs to the Issues page.

The development plan right now:

• 1.1.0 macOS [OSX] support
• 1.2.0 FreeBSD support
• 1.3.0 Support for GPU monitoring
• 1.X.0 Other platforms and features...

Windows support is not in the plans as of now, but if anyone else wants to take it on, I will try to help.

5 May 2021

This project is gonna take some time until it has complete feature parity with bpytop, since all system information gathering will have to be written from scratch without any external libraries. And will need some help in the form of code contributions to get complete support for BSD and macOS/OSX.

Documents

CHANGELOG.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Description

Resource monitor that shows usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes.

C++ version and continuation of bashtop and bpytop.

Features

• Easy to use, with a game inspired menu system.
• Full mouse support: all buttons with a highlighted key are clickable and mouse scrolling works in process list and menu boxes.
• Fast and responsive UI with UP, DOWN key process selection.
• Function for showing detailed stats for selected process.
• Ability to filter processes.
• Easy switching between sorting options.
• Tree view of processes.
• Send any signal to selected process.
• Pause the process list.
• UI menu for changing all config file options.
• Auto scaling graph for network usage.
• Shows IO activity and speeds for disks.
• Battery meter
• Selectable symbols for the graphs.
• Custom presets
• And more...

Themes

Btop++ uses the same theme files as bpytop and bashtop (some color values missing in bashtop themes).

See themes folder for available themes.

Btop searches the following directories for system themes:

• ../share/btop/themes (this path is relative to the btop executable)
• /usr/local/share/btop/themes
• /usr/share/btop/themes

The first directory that exists and isn't empty is used as the system themes directory.

The user themes directory depends on which environment variables are set:

• If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set, the user themes directory is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/btop/themes
• Otherwise, if $HOME is set, the user themes directory is $HOME/.config/btop/themes
• Otherwise, the user themes directory is ~/.config/btop/themes

The make install command places the default themes in [$PREFIX or /usr/local]/share/btop/themes. User created themes should be placed in the user themes directory.

Use the --themes-dir command-line option to specify a custom themes directory. When specified, this directory takes priority over the default search paths.

Let me know if you want to contribute with new themes.

The new Process list pausing and Process following features introduce a few new theme attributes. These attributes still need to be added to all of the existing themes (except the default one).

Process list banner attributes: * proc_pause_bg: background color of the banner when the list is paused. * proc_follow_bg: background color of the banner when the process following feature is active. * proc_banner_bg: background color of the banner when the process following feature is active AND the list is paused. * proc_banner_fg: foreground (text) color of the banner

Process following attributes: * followed_bg: background color of the followed process in the list. * followed_fg: foreground color of the followed process in the list.

Support and funding

You can sponsor this project through GitHub. See my sponsors page for options.

Or donate through PayPal or ko-fi.

Any support is greatly appreciated!

Prerequisites

For the best experience run within a terminal with support for:

• 24-bit truecolor (See list of terminals with truecolor support)
• 256-color terminals are supported through 24-bit to 256-color conversion when setting "truecolor" to False in the options or with "-lc/--low-color" arguments.
• 16 color TTY mode will be activated if a real tty device is detected. Can be forced with "-t/--tty" arguments.
• Wide characters (Are sometimes problematic in web-based terminals)

Also necessary is a UTF8 locale and a font that includes:

• Unicode Block “Braille Patterns” U+2800 - U+28FF (Not needed in TTY mode or with graphs set to type: block or tty.)
• Unicode Block “Geometric Shapes” U+25A0 - U+25FF
• Unicode Block "Box Drawing" and "Block Elements" U+2500 - U+259F

Optional Dependencies (Needed for GPU monitoring) (Only Linux)

GPU monitoring also requires a btop binary built with GPU support (GPU_SUPPORT=true flag).

See GPU compatibility section for more about compiling with GPU support.

• NVIDIA

If you have an NVIDIA GPU you must use an official NVIDIA driver, both the closed-source and open-source ones have been verified to work.

In addition to that