Help with iStat pro

Hello and welcome to the iStat pro manual. iStat pro is our biggest, baddest and most advanced system monitoring widget, filled to the gills with interesting and useful features.

Sections

iStat pro has 9 separate sections that can be turned on or off, each showing a specific set of information about the innards of your Mac.

CPU

The CPU section shows detailed information on the current state of your CPU(s). It supports up to 8 cores. For more information on the meaning of user, nice, system and idle, please read our iStat terminology document.

Memory

The Memory section shows detailed information about memory usage. For more information on the meaning of active, inactive, wired and used, please read our iStat terminology document.

Please note: iStat pro adds active and wired memory together to get the total memory used. Inactive memory is not counted. This is different to some of our other widgets and apps (eventually they’ll all be like this) and also different to the results from Terminal’s “Top” command. We feel this is a more accurate overview of the state of memory usage (as do all the people who emailed us asking to change it!).

Disks

The Disks section shows detailed information about all of your hard drives. CDs, DVDs and removeable media aren’t shown (that’s intentional!). You can filter what’s shown even further from the “Display” preferences on the back of the widget.

Network

The Network section shows detailed information about all your network interfaces and includes network traffic, total network traffic and external IP. You can filter what’s shown from the “Display” preferences on the back of the widget. Pressing the “i” key on your keyboard will copy your external IP address to the clipboard (handy for network admins!).

Processes

The Processes section shows the top five processes, listed by either CPU usage or memory usage (selectable in preferences). You can choose to exlude widgets from the processes list from the “Display” preferences on the back of iStat pro.

Uptime

The Uptime section shows your computer’s uptime and load averages.

Battery

The Battery section shows detailed stat about your notebook’s battery, including cycles, battery health and a nice icon showing if you’re plugged into mains power. For more information on battery health and cycles, please read our iStat terminology document.

The battery section also shows the power left in your Apple bluetooth keyboard and/or mouse.

Please note: If you don’t have a battery or bluetooth keyboard or mouse, then the battery section won’t be displayed.

Fans

The Fans section shows the fan sensors in your Mac. You can filter what’s shown from the “Display” preferences on the back of the widget. Please note that some PPC Macs are not supported by iStat pro.

Temps

The Temps section shows the temperature sensors in your Mac. You can filter what’s shown from the “Display” preferences on the back of the widget. Please note that some PPC Macs are not supported by iStat pro.

? and i buttons

Clicking the ? button will take you to this document (isn’t that how you got here in the first place???!?!). Clicking the “i” button will take you to the widget’s preferences.

Reordering the sections

The sections can easily be reordered in any way you’d like. Hovering the mouse pointed over a section reveals a small reordering handle. Simply click and drag this to the new position, like so:

Preferences

Degrees

The temperature type shown in all temps. This can be either fahrenheit, celsius or kelvin (whichever make more sense to you!).

Sort Processes By

This chooses the sort order and extra information shown in the Processes section.

Skin Type

Choose either “Tall” for a widget that stacks the sections vertically, or “Wide” for a widget that expands horizontally.

Skin Colour

Choose the skin colour for the front of the widget. The skins work as complete sets in that we’ve chosen appropriate header, section selector header and bar colours to suit each skin.

Check for updates now

See if you’re missing out on a newer version of iStat pro! Clicking this will check you have the latest version.

Check for updates

iStat pro will automatically check for updates daily. If you’d prefer it didn’t then set this option to “off”.

Sections tab

Turn any of the 9 sections off or on. The memory section can be set to “Simple”, “Advanced” or “Off” (Advanced shows extra detail). The CPU section can be set to “Bar”, “Graph” or “Off”.

Display tab

The display tab contains check boxes to disable items for the disks, network, temps and fans sections, as well as an option to hide widgets in the processes section.

Paypal

If you like and use iStat pro then please flip us some spare change… it’ll show us you care and help encourage future development of all our widgets.

Done

Clicking done takes you back to the front of the widget.

Copying your external IP address to the clipboard

To copy your external IP address to the clipboard, simply make sure the widget is in focus (click on it once if you’re not sure), then press the “i” key on your keyboard. You’ll see a small ‘IP’ icon in the header momentarily to indicate the copy has been done.

Keyboard shortcuts

Listed below are all the keyboard shortcuts for iStat pro. Please note that the widget needs to be in focus before these will work (ie. you need to click on the widget once, or it needs to be the last widget you clicked last time you used Dashboard).

c - Show or hide the CPU section
m - Show or hide the memory section
d - Show or hide the disks section
n - Show or hide the network section
p - Show or hide the processes section
u - Show or hide the uptime section
b - Show or hide the battery section
f - Show or hide the fans section
t - Show or hide the temps section
s - Swap between tall and wide skins
i - Copy external IP to the clipboard
g - Update external IP
1 - 8 - Change skin colour

Other shortcuts and tricks

For some general tips and tricks that work with all Dashboard widgets, check out our guide to Mac OS X’s Dashboard.