3/18/2023 0 Comments Istat menus 3![]() ![]() Even if you choose not customize the menus, they’re still gorgeous in a way only bjango can do.Īll menus have links to the relevant resource monitors that Apple already provides, such as Activity Monitor, Console, Disk Utility, and even apps like iCal. You can change just about everything as you see fit. All of the drop down menus can be fully customized, color, font, different chart types. This is also where you can do your own customization. Here you can turn features on and off as you see fit. When you launch the app, everything can be accessed through an easy-to-understand window. Some these act as enhanced versions of what Apple already provides in the systems, and other act as outright replacements. What kind of information? Well, you can check the CPU, disk usage and activity, battery, network, memory, date and time, and the internal sensors in your Mac. iStat Menus 3 allows you to quickly access information from the menu bar on your Mac. Not too much could be done maliciously with this information, but I’m glad bjango asked anyway. Essentially, it boils down to bjango asking for your permission to use detailed data that must be retrieved from deep inside the system. At first, I thought this was odd, but after thinking it through, I came to appreciate it. It’s absolutely worth it.When you first install iStat Menu 3, it will ask you to download some additional software so it can take full advantage of the sensors already built into you Mac. The app comes as a free demo version for 15 days, then you’ll have to purchase a license at $10. I’m sure you’ll eventually find 4 items you like and keep them in the menubar all the time. There’s so much about iStat Menus that you really have to try it yourself and play around with all the options. Hopefully an update will bring a simple black one. I also have a nice calendar icon in this way, but it’s red. Personally, I’ve removed Apple’s battery and clock item to use iStat’s one. There’s so much stuff to look at and set in the Preferences I can’t really cover all in a single post, but you can take a look at the screenshots to have an idea. If it’s the RAM, you get Wired, Active, Inactive and Free together with the top-consuming apps if it’s the battery you can see cycles, health and a progress bar. iStat Menus works like this: you either get an icon or a graph in the menubar, and to see further information about that item you have to click to display another gorgeous black menu with many additional details (numbers, graphs) about that item. You can also set rounded corners and tell the app to display a “Edit in preferences” menu in each dropdown item. The first tab, General, lets you choose between black icons and graphs in the menubar or aqua ones, and I’ve chosen the black ones because I can’t stand colored stuff running up there. It’s even replaced some “native” items from Apple. Guess what, this update turned out to be one of the best Mac apps I’ve tried recently, and after some customization (because you know, I’m kind of a menubar geek) the app it’s now up and running there. I never really considered switching from the simple widget to another app in the menubar, but the new version 3 came out last night and I decided to give it a try. Also, it’s free.ĭespite iStat Pro being awesome and unobtrusive, Bjango also developed a different version of it, iStat Menus, which unlike the widget is a “real app” that sits in the menubar and allows you to choose which stats to display as icons or small graphs, animated just like in the widget. It may be a little scary and too complex at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a must have tool to understand everything about your Mac in different situations. As Bjango’s tradition is a great looking piece of software but, most of all, it’s useful: when I’m doing something that requires a high consumption of resources like exporting a HD video or downloading many files at the same time, I usually invoke the Dashboard and take a look at what’s going on using this widget. IStat Pro is a very popular dashboard widget for Mac OS X that lets you quickly check on your Mac stats like fan temperature, battery health, RAM and CPU usage. I’ve always done that with the iStat Pro dashboard widget from Bjango (former iSlayer), but last night I decided to upgrade to iStat Menus 3. But, I think that’s a given that I should keep an eye on its internal stats: you know, stuff like the battery health, CPU usage over time and memory consumption. I think that my machine is still a great one though, with its 4GB of RAM and a pretty capable hard disk: it’s been able to do so many things for me in these two years that I don’t see it being replaced anytime soon, actually. Maybe with some SSD and new processor goodness. I have a late 2008 Macbook Pro, and one could argue that maybe it’s time for me to consider an upgrade to a new model.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |