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Overview
htop is an interactive terminal process viewer for system resources and running processes. It combines CPU, memory, load, and swap meters with sortable and filterable process lists and lets operators perform actions such as renicing or signaling without manually entering PIDs.
Features and best fit
Based on official documentation; not hands-on tested · Content checked:
Key features
Monitor system meters and process state in one terminal view
System-wide meters and a process table expose CPU and memory use, load, swap, command lines, and process state, with configurable fields and layouts.
Sources: [1]
Search, filter, sort, and inspect processes as a tree
The process list can be scrolled horizontally and vertically and switched among search, filter, tree, and sort views for quick interactive investigation.
Sources: [1]
Perform process actions without manually entering PIDs
Actions such as sending signals and changing process priority can be applied to the selected process directly from the interface.
Sources: [1]
Best fit
Fits local and SSH troubleshooting where immediate process visibility matters
It is useful for developers and operators who want to correlate system load with running processes on a local or remote host without deploying a separate GUI monitoring stack.
Sources: [1]
Before adoption
Runtime depends on ncurses and platform capabilities differ
htop requires ncurses 6.0 for terminal handling, while metrics and optional libraries vary across Linux, BSD, macOS, and other supported systems. Review build flags and platform capabilities.
Official sources
- [1]htop 3.5.3 README(2026-10-04)
- [2]htop 3.5.3 release(2026-10-04)
- [3]htop 3.5.3 ChangeLog(2026-10-04)
- [4]htop 3.5.3 configure metadata(2026-10-04)
- [5]htop GPL license(2026-10-04)
Supplemental curator note
htop can also signal or renice processes. On production hosts, verify privileges and the selected process before performing mutating actions.
Try it in 3 steps
- 1
Fetch the htop 3.5.3 source
Pin the source to the reviewed stable release tag.
git clone --depth 1 --branch 3.5.3 https://github.com/htop-dev/htop.git htop-3.5.3 - 2
Configure the build environment
Detect required ncurses support and platform-specific features without installing anything system-wide.
cd htop-3.5.3 && ./autogen.sh && ./configure - 3
Build locally and check only the version
Verify the local 3.5.3 binary without running
make installor performing process-management actions.cd htop-3.5.3 && make -j2 && ./htop --version
Growth
Growth trends · Last 30 days
8,367 Stars
Trend data is still being collected.
Development activity
Last 90 days · weekly
- Commits (last 30 days)
- 44
- Open PRs
- 88
Development activity is still being collected.
Built with
Categories and tags
GitHub data
GitHub dataView detailed GitHub data
GitHub Topics
- process
- viewer
- console
- terminal
- linux
- macos
- bsd
- c
- hacktoberfest
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