Have you ever wished that there was an easier way to monitor your system resources on your Mac? Meet OS Track, an app that monitors your system quietly in the background. This OS X Lion compatible app supports full screen view, is very easy to use, and best of all it is free.
“OS Track is a highly advanced monitoring system for your computer that allows you to analyse your use of the resources of your OS over time.” It constantly monitors your system’s CPU, memory, and bandwidth so that you can visually see how much of your resources are being used. OS Track even has a menubar icon for easy access to your reports and preferences.
OS Track in Action
Upon first opening the app, you’ll be asked whether you want to start it when you login. Doing this will of course ensure that your system sis constantly being monitored. If you prefer to keep the apps that startup at login to a minimum, you can just choose to open OS Track whenever you need to.
Filter By Time Span
Instead of viewing your usage by day, OS Track lets you view according to a specific timespan. It keeps a 60-day history of your OS activity and you can then filter your data by a 7-day, 15-day, 30-day, or 60-day period.
Filter By Search or Name
The app features a convenient search bar that lets you search for a specific app so that you can quickly see what kind of resources it’s using. Alternately, you can simply select the name of the app from the lefthand list and view details about it that way as well.
View Your Reports
The longer you track, the more graphical your reports will be since you’ll have a larger tracking time span. Each report is viewed separately by selecting CPU, Memory, or Bandwidth.
The format is in bar graph form with different colors representing each app. You can also see actual stats in percentage form; these percentages represent the current, average, and peak usage of each or all apps (depending on which option you select).
These reports are really a great way to see which apps are memory hogs. For instance, if your system becomes sluggish and starts moving really slow, you can easily use the reports to find the culprit that is causing the problem.
What’s Missing
While OS Track is a great app there is one thing that seems to be missing, and that’s the ability to close out apps from the interface. Of course, OS track is not a task manager, it’s just a monitoring tool, so I guess it only makes sense that you can’t quit apps from the interface. However, I feel that it would be a nice added bonus.
OS Track – Features
- CPU Tracking
- Memory usage tracking
- Bandwidth tracking
- Report filtering by time span
- App filtering via search or name
- Menubar icon for quick access
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