The questions peopleactually ask.

MacStats monitors CPU usage, RAM with an estimated pressure indicator, disk, network speed, battery health, and individual process activity in real time. It complements Activity Monitor with a compact menu bar view and AI explanations.

MacStats requires macOS 13 Ventura or later and an Apple silicon (M-series) Mac. It is a native Swift application with no Electron runtime and no background daemon.

MacStats is built to stay out of the way. On an Apple silicon Mac it typically uses around 1% CPU and roughly 65 MB of memory while monitoring. Exact figures vary with your hardware and refresh interval.

Activity Monitor shows raw numbers in a separate window that you have to open and interpret yourself. MacStats lives in your menu bar, keeps historical trends over 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days, learns what is normal for your Mac so it can flag genuine anomalies, and explains in plain English what a process such as kernel_task actually is.

No. The AI Explainer only sends the literal name of the process (e.g., kernel_task) and coarse system metrics such as CPU percentage and memory pressure level to our servers to generate the explanation. We do not send file paths, execution arguments, document contents, or any personal context. Read our Privacy Policy for full details.

Yes. We hate subscription fatigue as much as you do. When you purchase MacStats Pro, you own that major version forever, with no recurring fees.

Yes. To keep MacStats free from subscriptions there is a fair-use limit rather than a subscription. New licences include 300 AI explanations per month, which is many times what normal use reaches, and licences bought earlier keep the allowance they were sold. Cache hits, where the answer is already known, do not count toward it. Monitoring, history and alerts are unlimited and never draw on it.

MacStats requires low-level system access to provide accurate monitoring and process insights. Direct distribution allows MacStats to deliver the best experience outside the restrictive App Store sandbox.

MacStats is not yet notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper shows a warning the first time you open it. Dismiss the warning, then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom and click "Open Anyway". Confirm, and it opens. This only needs to be done once. On macOS 14 Sonoma and earlier you can right-click the app and choose "Open" instead; Apple removed that shortcut in macOS 15 Sequoia. Notarization is planned once our Apple Developer Program enrolment completes.