The TUI

monitor studio launches the interactive TUI — a Bubble Tea v2 application with a Nord theme, nine tabs, and full keyboard and mouse navigation. (Running bare monitor prints help instead.)

monitor studio   # launches the TUI (9 tabs); `monitor tui` also works

The same data is available without a terminal via the CLI and the MCP server; the TUI is just the human-facing surface.

The nine tabs

The tab bar runs across the top of the screen. Tabs are numbered 1–9 and always appear in this order:

#	Tab	What it shows
1	Overview	CPU and memory gauges side by side, plus a network panel (per-second and total throughput)
2	CPU	CPU history, a responsive per-core grid, frequency, load averages, and core/thread counts
3	Memory	Memory usage and swap
4	Temperature	CPU package, CPU cores, GPU, ANE, and battery sensor readings, plus fan telemetry when available
5	Disk	Disk usage and I/O
6	Network	Network throughput
7	Processes	A sortable, searchable, selectable process table
8	Settings	The current configuration (editable in the TUI)
9	Trends	Sparklines and summary stats over the persistent history captured by monitor history record

The header adapts from full tab names to abbreviations and finally the active tab on narrow terminals. The active tab uses both color and a ▸ marker. The status bar remains pinned to the bottom and reports LIVE, PAUSED, WAITING, or STALE alongside CPU, memory, sample time, and context-aware shortcuts.

CPU core grid and metric availability

The CPU tab lays out per-core gauges in one to four columns based on terminal width. It uses the available height as a row budget, so common Apple Silicon core counts appear without the old eight-core cutoff. If the terminal cannot display every core, the panel shows +N cores hidden and prompts you to enlarge the terminal instead of silently omitting them.

CPU history, per-core counters, CPU information, and load averages each expose their collection state. When a metric is unsupported or temporarily unavailable, Studio shows the collector's reason instead of an ambiguous numeric zero. When collection is healthy but has not produced a sample yet, the panel tells you to wait for or request the next refresh with r.

Temperature badges

Each temperature reading is badged ● real when it comes from real SMC sensors (via powermetrics on macOS) or ● est when it falls back to a CPU-load estimate. Fan telemetry is unavailable on Apple Silicon (the SMC keys are restricted), in which case the tab says so.

Settings tab

The Settings tab is editable in the TUI. It lists the update interval, temperature unit, whether system processes are shown, the maximum process count, mouse enablement, and the CPU/memory alert thresholds. A ▸ marks the selected row:

Key	Action
↑ / ↓ (or k / j)	Select a setting row
Enter / Space	Cycle the selected value forward
- (or _)	Cycle the selected value back
s	Save the current settings to the config file

Because h/l and the arrow keys ←/→ remain bound to tab navigation, row selection uses ↑/↓ (or k/j) and value editing uses Enter/Space/-. Changes are held in memory until you press s, which writes them to the config file at ~/.config/monitor/config.json. Studio shows saved, unsaved, and error feedback inline. Changing Update Interval immediately resets both the repaint timer and the running collector.

Keyboard shortcuts

Global navigation

Key	Action
q / Ctrl+C / Esc	Quit
Tab / → / l	Next tab
Shift+Tab / ← / h	Previous tab
1–9	Jump directly to a tab
?	Open context-aware keyboard help (?, Esc, or q closes it)
p	Pause/resume applying live snapshots
r	Refresh from the latest snapshot now

Tab navigation wraps around in both directions.

Processes tab

These keys are active only on the Processes tab (tab 7):

Key	Action
Enter	Open diagnostics for the highlighted process
/	Edit the process filter
Space	Toggle selection of the highlighted process
Ctrl+A	Select all (filtered) processes
Ctrl+D	Clear the selection
c	Sort by CPU (press again to reverse)
m	Sort by memory (press again to reverse)
k	Terminate (SIGTERM) the selection, with confirmation
x	Force-kill (SIGKILL) the selection, with confirmation

The table itself responds to the usual arrow keys for moving the highlight up and down. Its columns adapt to terminal width, preserving PID, name, and CPU on narrow screens and progressively adding memory, threads, I/O, and user details.

Inspecting process diagnostics

Highlight a process and press Enter to open its read-only diagnostics panel. The panel remains pinned to that PID while live samples and table sorting continue. It shows:

• PID, name, owner, status, and parent PID
• CPU, resident memory (RSS), memory share, read/write I/O, and thread count
• Whether the process is a user, system, or protected process, including its termination policy

Metric values retain their availability state. For example, macOS reports that per-process I/O counters are unsupported instead of displaying an ambiguous 0 B; temporary permission or collection failures include their reason. If the pinned PID exits between samples, the panel says that the process is no longer present and offers a refresh instead of switching to whichever process now occupies the table row.

The diagnostics panel is modal: process selection, sorting, navigation, and termination shortcuts do not reach the table underneath it.

Key	Action in process diagnostics
Enter / Esc / q	Close the diagnostics panel without quitting Studio
r	Refresh the latest snapshot for the pinned PID
?	Open context-aware help; close help to return to diagnostics
Ctrl+C	Quit Studio

Searching processes

Press / on the Processes tab to edit the filter. While the prompt is active, every keystroke is search input — typing q, l, a digit, etc. edits the query instead of quitting or switching tabs. Matching is case-insensitive across process name, PID, and user, and the visible match count is shown.

• Backspace deletes the last character.
• Ctrl+U clears the query.
• Enter applies the filter and closes the prompt.
• Esc cancels editing and restores the prior filter.

If nothing matches, the table shows No processes match the current filter.

Selecting and killing processes

You can act on either a single highlighted row or a multi-row selection:

1. Select rows with Space (toggling each one), Ctrl+A (select all filtered rows), or Ctrl+D (clear). Selected rows are marked with a ▸ and the Processes panel heading shows the count, e.g. Processes - 3 selected │ k:kill x:force-kill.
2. Kill with k (SIGTERM) or x (SIGKILL). If you haven't explicitly selected anything, the currently highlighted row is used.
3. A confirmation dialog appears, listing each target PID and a safety label: OK, CAUTION for system processes, or CRITICAL for protected ones. Force-kill adds a warning that the process won't be allowed to clean up.
4. Press y to confirm or n / Esc to cancel. Verification runs asynchronously so Studio stays responsive, then reports terminated, still-running, failed, and spared counts in the status bar.

Termination goes through the same shared safety check used by the CLI and MCP server: protected processes are never killed, even if you confirm. See Safety for the full protected/system process rules.

Mouse

Mouse support is controlled by the Mouse Enabled setting (mouse_enabled in the config), which is on by default. You can toggle it from the Settings tab or the config file. When it is on:

• Clicking a tab in the header row switches directly to that tab.
• Scrolling the wheel on the Processes tab scrolls the process table.

When mouse_enabled is off, the TUI is keyboard-only.