{"slug": "procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users", "title": "Procopticon – A process manager for macOS for power users", "summary": "Developer Nicholas Ochoa released Procopticon, a native macOS process manager built with Swift and SwiftUI, as an MIT-licensed open-source project that requires macOS 26+ and Xcode 26+. Procopticon offers a live process tree with roughly 95 columns covering CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU, power and scheduling, plus regex and JavaScript-based filtering, process inspection of threads, sockets and memory regions, and visibility into which processes use the microphone, camera or screen recording. Ochoa wrote nearly all of Procopticon with AI and documents the approach in an AI-POLICY.md file, noting the project may not suit users who prefer to avoid AI-assisted code.", "body_md": "Procopticon is a native process explorer for macOS, built with Swift and SwiftUI.\n\nOn Windows I used [Sysinternals Process Explorer](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer) for years, and then [System Informer](https://github.com/winsiderss/systeminformer/) (formerly Process Hacker), which I still use on every Windows machine I work on. Activity Monitor on macOS isn't bad, but it has never had the power-user features I got used to in those tools. Procopticon is my attempt at a process manager for the Mac that does everything I could need or want from one.\n\nNearly all of Procopticon was written with AI. If that's something you'd rather avoid, this project probably isn't for you. [AI-POLICY.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/AI-POLICY.md) covers how AI is used here and what's expected of AI-assisted contributions.\n\n- **Process monitoring:** A live process tree with roughly 95 available columns for CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU, power, scheduling, and more. Helper processes are grouped under the applications responsible for them.\n- **Search and filters:** Find processes by name, PID, user, path, or command line. Use regex or JavaScript expressions, save filters, and configure highlighting and alerts.\n- **Process inspection:** Examine threads, open files, sockets, loaded modules, memory regions, environment variables, logs, crash reports, and code-signing details.\n- **Process controls:** Terminate, suspend, resume, restart, send signals, or run tools like`sample` ,`spindump` ,`vmmap` ,`lsof` , and`fs_usage` .\n- **Services and startup items:** Inspect and manage launchd jobs, login items, extensions, cron jobs, and other startup mechanisms.\n- **System monitoring:** Per-core CPU graphs, memory pressure, disk and network activity, GPU usage, power, and thermal information.\n- **Privacy and security:** See which processes use the microphone, camera, or screen recording, and inspect signatures, entitlements, sandboxing, and quarantine information.\n\nFor details on individual views, filters, expressions, privileges, and tools, see the [feature reference](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/docs/REFERENCE.md).\n\nRequires **macOS 26+** and **Xcode 26+**.\n\n```\n./scripts/build-app.sh       # Build build/Procopticon.app\n./scripts/install.sh         # Build, install to /Applications, and open\nswift test                   # Run unit tests\n```\n\nFor a development build that can run alongside the installed app:\n\n```\nVARIANT=dev ./scripts/build-app.sh\n```\n\nTo create a signed, notarized release DMG:\n\n```\nVERSION=1.0.0 ./scripts/release.sh\n```\n\nSee the release script for setup instructions. More build options and launch arguments are in the [reference](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/docs/REFERENCE.md#building).\n\nProcopticon works without elevated privileges, but macOS restricts what it can read or change in processes belonging to other users. You can authorize its privileged helper when needed, or authorize on startup.\n\nSee [Privileges](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/docs/REFERENCE.md#privileges) and [SECURITY.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/SECURITY.md) for the details.\n\nSee [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md), [AI-POLICY.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/AI-POLICY.md), and [SECURITY.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/SECURITY.md).\n\n[MIT](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/LICENSE). Procopticon includes [QuickJS-ng](https://github.com/quickjs-ng/quickjs), also MIT licensed. See [THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md](https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon/blob/main/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users", "canonical_source": "https://github.com/nicholas-ochoa/Procopticon", "published_at": "2026-11-11 23:24:23+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-11 23:50:38.041549+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["developer-tools", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Procopticon", "Nicholas Ochoa", "macOS", "Swift", "SwiftUI", "QuickJS-ng", "Xcode"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/procopticon-a-process-manager-for-macos-for-power-users.jsonld"}}