macpow
A real-time terminal UI power monitor for Apple Silicon Macs, showing per-component power draw, temperatures, frequencies, and process energy.
What is macpow?
macpow is a real-time power tree monitor built for Apple Silicon Macs. It solves the problem of opaque power consumption by providing a detailed, terminal-based breakdown of energy usage across the entire System-on-Chip (SoC) and peripherals, using direct hardware readings from macOS interfaces like IOReport and SMC.
Developers, power users, and engineers working on Apple Silicon Macs who need to understand system power behavior, optimize for energy efficiency, or debug thermal and performance issues.
Developers choose macpow because it offers unparalleled depth of hardware telemetry without sudo, provides direct measurements (not estimates) for most components, and presents everything in a fast, interactive terminal interface with features like per-process energy attribution and JSON export.
Overview
💻🔋 Real-time power tree TUI for Apple Silicon
Use Cases
Best For
- Debugging thermal throttling and performance issues on Apple Silicon Macs
- Optimizing application energy efficiency by identifying power-hungry processes
- Monitoring real-time power draw of CPU, GPU, and other SoC components
- Analyzing peripheral power consumption (displays, USB devices, network interfaces)
- Integrating system power metrics into custom dashboards via JSON output
- Understanding the power impact of different workloads and system states
Not Ideal For
- Cross-platform development teams needing power monitoring on Windows or Linux systems
- Users who prefer graphical system monitors with drag-and-drop dashboards over terminal interfaces
- Scenarios requiring automated, long-term power logging without manual JSON parsing and external scripting
- Owners of Intel-based Macs or systems running macOS versions older than Monterey (macOS 12+)
Pros & Cons
Pros
Reads from IOReport, SMC, and other macOS APIs to provide accurate power data without estimation, as detailed in the power measurements table for components like CPU, GPU, and ANE.
Covers nearly every SoC part and peripheral, from CPU cores to USB devices, with per-process energy attribution for detailed analysis, as shown in the features list.
Runs entirely with user-level permissions, enhancing security and ease of use, which is a core part of the project philosophy and eliminates elevation risks.
Offers collapsible tree views, sparkline charts, and configurable refresh rates, making real-time monitoring intuitive and customizable with keybindings and mouse support.
Cons
Exclusively supports Apple Silicon Macs on macOS 12+, making it useless for Intel Macs, other operating systems, or older macOS versions, severely limiting its applicability.
Depends on macOS internal interfaces like IOReport, which can change with new hardware, requiring frequent updates and potential breakage, as noted in the diagnostics section for new chip variants.
Terminal-based interface with numerous keybindings, symbols, and a complex legend may be overwhelming for users accustomed to simpler, graphical system monitors.
Focuses on real-time display; persistent logging requires external scripting with JSON export, lacking integrated long-term storage or analysis tools, which adds overhead for data aggregation.
Frequently Asked Questions
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