Vitals now shows the Neural Engine and lets you customize how it looks 🎨
Every Mac with Apple Silicon has a Neural Engine. More apps use it every month for dictation, transcription, and other AI that runs on the Mac.
Activity Monitor doesn't show it. I had no way to see how busy it was or which app was using it.
So Vitals now shows it.
- Neural Engine: how hard it's working, which apps are using it, and a chart of the last minutes. It can sit in the menu bar, and Vitals tells you when an app has kept it busy for 20 minutes.
- Customize: Vitals looks one way, the way I like it. Now you pick the chart colors, the font for the numbers, compact spacing, charts that go back 30 minutes, and a window that floats on top.
- Red under strain: readings in the menu bar can turn red when the CPU, memory, disk, or heat is under strain, so you only look when something is red.
Everything is on one page in Settings, with a preview that changes as you choose.
The color set I'd point you to is Accessible. It stays easy to tell apart with color blindness.
If you could change one thing about how Vitals looks, what would it be?
The update is free for everyone who owns Vitals. Open Vitals and it will offer the update, or download it from vitalsmac.com.
Pictures and the full list: vitalsmac.com/changelog/1.5
Replies
I would add a small warning symbol beside a reading under strain so the signal survives without color
Clicking it could show which threshold was crossed and for how long. That would make the red state easier to interpret
@al_kub There is one already. Settings → Layout → Menu Bar has "Show a Warning Sign When the Mac Is Under Strain", right beside the red switch, and it doesn't depend on color. It is one sign for the whole Mac though, not one per reading.
Showing which limit was crossed and for how long isn't there yet. I've added it to my list.
Keep up the good work. Hey, saw you on AppSumo - was it worth the work to build a new license system?
@steve_chazin thank you. I have a couple of sales on AppSumo so far. It went live 2 days ago.
So it is too early to say whether it is worth it.
The Accessible color set is a thoughtful addition. Could there also be an option to change the alert colors separately from the chart colors?
@mariusholm Not yet, a color set changes both together. Separate alert colors is doable, and it's on my list now.