Observatory — activity monitor, but more. Created for developers and power users who expect more than a long list of processes.
- groups related processes into understandable application totals, with CPU, memory, disk activity, wakeups, process count, and state in one place.
- records controlled usage tests for one to four applications at once, with manual and automatic test modes, optional warm-up, and repeated rounds.
- stores test results for you to inspect later and compare with results from any other saved test.
Available only on macOS.
Observatory is local-first. All recorded data stays on your device. The live Now view keeps only a rolling 60-second chart in memory; persistent recording begins only when you start a test.
Download the latest build from GitHub Releases.
The current GitHub build is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized. Read the installation guide to verify the download and open it for the first time without disabling Gatekeeper.
- macOS 14 or later
- Apple silicon for the currently tested release path
- Xcode 26 or later when building from source
Some protected or short-lived processes may have unavailable measurements. Observatory shows them as unavailable instead of silently treating them as zero. See known limitations for details.
From the repository root:
./scripts/run.shThis resolves the pinned dependencies, builds the Debug configuration into
.build, and opens Observatory.app. Xcode is optional unless you need its
debugger, previews, or another IDE-only tool.
To produce an ad-hoc-signed release candidate, its ZIP archive, and a SHA-256 checksum:
./scripts/release.shThe release artifacts are written to .release/.