StatsBar for Mac provides quick system statistics

StatsBar for the Mac (on sale for US$3.99 for the month of April) lets you get a quick overview of your Mac's vital statistics via a handy, unobtrusive window. It's quicker than opening Activity Monitor for at-a-glance look at what's up. I've been using it for a few days and am glad it's on my Mac. Here's my look at StatsBar.

Looks

StatsBar lives in your Mac's menu bar. The tiny little icon (I think it's supposed to be two gears but it looks like to daisies to me) is clicked to bring up the main screen, which is mostly grey and easy to read.

The main screen itself is divided into five sections: CPU, Memory, Disk Usage, Network and Power. I've got no complaints in the looks department.

Use

There are a couple of neat things here. First, there are three display options. You can opt to have the main screen disappear when you click outside of it, or float above all windows. To do this, click the anchor icon in the upper right. Or, anchor it to the menu bar icon and it'll always appear just beneath it.

CPU information is displayed in real time, and divided into user and system processes as well as idle percentage. Uptime is also displayed. You can also monitor wired, active and inactive memory and whimper as your available disk space slowly shrinks. Stop buying all those movies!

Finally, network information is available as well as handy details on your battery (I did not test this on a desktop), including its health, number of cycles, age, temp and power usage.

Conclusion

StatsBar is pretty handy and could be a first step when trying to nail down a problem before you open up Activity Monitor or Terminal. Those who like to keep an eye on what's happening under the hood should check it out.