htop is an interactive system monitor process viewer and process manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program top.

htop
Original author(s)Hisham Muhammad
Developer(s)Hisham Muhammad (2004–2019)
htop developer team (2020–present)
Initial releaseMay 2004; 20 years ago (2004-05)[1]
Stable release
3.3.0[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 10 January 2024
Repository
Written inC (ncurses library)
Operating systemLinux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Illumos, OpenIndiana
TypeProcess Viewer / System monitor
LicenseGPL-2.0-or-later
Websitehtop.dev

It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status. htop can also display the processes as a tree.

Users often deploy htop in cases where Unix top does not provide enough information about the system's processes. htop is also popularly used interactively as a system monitor.[3] Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending signals to processes.

htop is written in the C programming language using the ncurses library. Its name is derived from the original author's first name, as a nod to pinfo,[4] an info-replacement program that does the same.[5]

Because system monitoring interfaces are not standardized among Unix-like operating systems, much of htop's code must be rewritten for each operating system. Cross-platform, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and OS X (now macOS) support was added in htop 2.0.[6][7] Solaris/Illumos/OpenIndiana support was added in 2.2.0.

htop was forked by several developers as htop-dev,[8] and with support from the original author, the homepage was later redirected to a new domain.[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "GitHub - htop-dev/htop at 80f344559bba331d6daa2c913005e7eefddcf075". GitHub.
  2. ^ "Release 3.3.0". 10 January 2024. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  3. ^ "System Monitoring with htop". Archived from the original on 2018-06-18. Retrieved 2018-02-05.
  4. ^ "Pinfo - A lynx-style info and man reader". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
  5. ^ "htop FAQ". Archived from the original on January 21, 2014. Retrieved 2012-06-15.
  6. ^ "Going cross-platform: how htop was made portable - FOSDEM 2016". YouTube. 10 February 2016. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 2016-12-30.
  7. ^ "Htop - an interactive process viewer". Archived from the original on September 27, 2018. Retrieved September 27, 2018.
  8. ^ "Htop forked to htop-dev, version 3.0.0 released with over 2 years of bug fixes and features | Lobsters". lobste.rs. Retrieved 2024-10-04.
  9. ^ "hisham.hm/htop". Hisham Muhammad. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
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