btop

btop is an interactive, GPU-capable terminal resource monitor. It displays real-time statistics for CPU, memory, disks, network, and running processes with a customizable, mouse-supportable graphical UI.

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1. Quick Comparison with standard top

Feature	top	btop
User Interface	Plain text / Minimalist	✅ Rich, colorized graphs with box layouts
Mouse Interaction	❌ No	✅ Yes (fully clickable menu, boxes, and lists)
GPU Monitoring	❌ No	✅ Yes (monitors NVIDIA, AMD, Intel GPU usage)
Process Control	Basic commands only	✅ Simplified filtering, tree toggling, and signaling
Interface Customization	❌ No	✅ Yes (change layouts, update rate, themes on-the-fly)

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2. Command Line Options

Use startup flags to customize performance, themes, or configure layout before launching.

# Basic launch
btop

# Force TTY mode (useful for SSH connections - uses 16 colors and basic graphs)
btop --tty

# Use low-color mode (disables truecolor 24-bit rendering, uses 256 colors)
btop --low-color

# Set startup update rate in milliseconds (e.g. 500ms)
btop --update 500

# Start with an initial process search filter
btop --filter "nginx"

# Load a custom configuration file
btop --config /path/to/custom/btop.conf

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3. General Navigation & Interface Controls

Adjust panels, presets, and main options using these hotkeys.

Key	Action	Description
m	Main Menu	Open settings, change color theme, and read help documentation.
p	Next Preset	Cycle through preset box view combinations.
1	Toggle CPU	Show/hide CPU box.
2	Toggle Memory	Show/hide Memory and Disk box.
3	Toggle Network	Show/hide Network traffic box.
4	Toggle Processes	Show/hide Process tracking box.
+ / -	Update Speed	Increase / decrease refresh frequency by 100ms.
Esc / q	Quit	Exit the program.

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4. Process Panel Controls

Manage running services and threads interactively.

Key	Action	Description
↑ / ↓ (or j / k)	Navigate List	Scroll through the running processes.
Enter	Process Details	View memory, path, CPU usage, and parent info for the selected process.
f	Filter	Search processes by typing name. Press Enter to search or Esc to clear.
t	Tree View	Toggle nested parent/child tree formatting.
r	Reverse Sort	Reverse sorting order of active column.
k	Kill Process	Send SIGKILL (9) immediately to selected process.
s	Send Signal	Open menu to select custom Unix signal (e.g. SIGTERM, SIGINT).

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5. Network Panel Controls

Check bandwidth status.

Key	Action	Description
n	Switch Interface	Cycle through active network cards (e.g. eth0, wlan0).
b	Toggle Unit	Switch display format between bytes (B/s) and bits (b/s).
a	Auto-Scale	Toggle automatic scaling of graph heights.
z	Zero Counters	Reset total download and upload data statistics to 0.

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6. Configurations (btop.conf)

You can modify btop's defaults directly in the configuration file.

• File Location: ~/.config/btop/btop.conf
• Theme Directory: ~/.config/btop/themes/

Common Config Tweaks (~/.config/btop/btop.conf):

# Enable Vim keys navigation (h, j, k, l, g, G)
vim_keys = true

# Change default sampling interval (in milliseconds)
update_ms = 1000

# Customize visible panels on startup
shown_boxes = "cpu mem net proc"

# Enable/disable mouse input
disable_mouse = false

# Toggle terminal transparency background
theme_background = false