          
          v1.6.0 · Build 137 · macOS 14+
        

Your Mac’s vitals,
in your menu bar.

CPU, GPU, memory, storage, network, battery and thermals — read live on device across 17 cards you can drag, collapse and pin. Nothing leaves your Mac unless you ask it to.

Coming soon — £14.99 View source

14-day trial · £14.99 one-off · Universal binary

          CPU {{ cpu }}%
          
          RAM {{ ram }}%
          
          ↓ {{ dl }} MB/s
          
          ↑ {{ ul }} MB/s

CPU · RAM · Disk · ↓ ↑ · Battery — live in the strip

Specto dashboard with processor, network, storage, battery, memory and summary cards

Developers

Watch a build eat your cores, spot the runaway process, and see thermals before the fans tell you.

Editors & 3D

GPU load, disk throughput and scratch-volume space in one glance, per project.

Older Macs

Battery health, cycle count and memory pressure — know what’s actually slowing you down.

Dashboard

17 cards. Only the ones you want.

Seventeen cards, six on by default. Drag to reorder, collapse what you’re not watching, switch wide or compact density, and promote any external volume to a card of its own.

Processor

CPU load{{ cpu }}%

GPU load{{ gpu }}%

Network

Download{{ dl }} MB/s

Upload{{ ul }} MB/s

Wi‑Fi · −65 dBm · SSID shown on device

Storage

Macintosh HD78%

49.8 GB free of 228.3 GB

Every mounted volume, with eject

Battery

Charge{{ batt }}%

              HEALTH 100%CYCLES 94
            

2h 08m to empty

Cards you can move

Per-core CPU load and GPU utilisation, disk read/write throughput, thermal sensors and fan speeds, live wattage draw, top processes with confirmation-gated force quit, and Smart Insights that read the whole picture in a sentence.

Drag to reorder Collapse Wide / compact Popover or pinned window

Specto monitor tab with rearrangeable metric cards

Pin it anywhere

Popover mode auto-fits so nothing scrolls; pinned mode enlarges into a window you can park anywhere. ⌥⌘S from anywhere, ⌘1 / ⌘2 switch tabs, Esc closes.

Health you control

Alerts for high CPU, memory pressure, low disk and low battery — with cooldowns, inline snooze, and one click through to Activity Monitor or Disk Utility.

Light on the Mac

Adaptive sampling pauses GPU, process and volume work whenever nothing on screen needs it. Widgets read a shared snapshot instead of waking the app.

Menu bar

One strip, or one per sensor.

Compact strip, detailed icons or your own profile. Tap sensors to show or hide, reorder what the strip carries, swap any SF Symbol — or replace icons with live sparklines for CPU and network.

All-in-1

One compact menu item

Separate

Individual sensor items

CPU RAM Disk Net Batt All-in-1

Tap to show / hide in menu bar

SPARKLINESLive CPU and network graphs rendered straight into the menu bar.

AUTO-HIDEItems disappear while everything is healthy, and reappear when it isn’t.

HOTKEY⌥⌘S opens the dashboard from anywhere — or bind your own.

Specto settings showing layout, sensors, network menu item, compact bar and order

Setup

Running in thirty seconds.

Four screens, no account, nothing to configure before it works. Replay the whole thing from Help whenever you want.

01

Welcome

Agree to the terms and you’re in — no account, no email.

02

Pick a profile

Quiet, Balanced or Detailed. Every option stays editable.

Specto onboarding — Choose what’s stored

03

Choose what’s stored

History and notifications are opt-in, one switch each.

04

Start Specto

Your profile applies and the strip appears in the menu bar.

Desktop widgets & themes

On your desktop, too.

Native WidgetKit widgets in small, medium and large, for the desktop or Notification Center. They read a shared snapshot in the background, follow your theme, and show a clear paused state when the app isn’t running.

System Overview — pick the metrics it carries

Disk Activity — a dedicated read/write I/O graph

Battery Power — charge level and live wattage draw

Thermal — system thermal state and fan speeds

Glass

Translucent chrome that follows system light and dark.

Dark

Solid deep panels for high-contrast rooms.

Accent

History & alerts

Look back, then get told.

Ring-buffer history for network and per-app resources, charts that keep a steady two-minute window whatever your refresh rate, and CSV out when you want to do your own maths.

1h 24h 7d 30d

Four time ranges

Network throughput and per-app resource history, kept in a ring buffer and pruned automatically.

1s · 2s · 5s refresh

Charts that hold their window

Sample buffers adapt to your refresh rate so a chart always shows the same two minutes of history.

CSV export

Send network and resource history straight to a CSV file for your own analysis.

specto-network-history.csv

Alerts that behave

High CPU, memory pressure, low disk and low battery — with cooldowns, inline snooze and one-click quick actions.

Activity Monitor Disk Utility Snooze

Network History · live · last 24 samples

Live 1H 24H 7D 30D

Export CSV

↓ DOWNLOAD

{{ dl }} MB/s

peak 8.4 MB/s

↑ UPLOAD

{{ ulKb }} KB/s

peak 1.1 MB/s

↻ SESSION

4.15 GB

↓ 3.51 GB · ↑ 661.8 MB

Download Upload Live ring buffer · session totals reset when Specto opens

Privacy

It runs on your Mac. And stays there.

No accounts. No analytics. No data sold. Optional history is off by default and written only to this Mac.

Local by default

CPU, memory, volumes, speeds, battery and processes are read on device for display — never uploaded as telemetry.

History is optional

net_history.json and process_history.json live in ~/Library/Application Support/Specto, hold at most 30 days, and are deleted the moment you turn the toggle off.

Wi‑Fi name stays on screen

Your SSID may appear in Network for display via CoreWLAN. It is never written to history files or sent anywhere; if macOS withholds it, Specto just shows “Wi‑Fi”.

You choose outbound

Nothing phones home. Two user-initiated taps only: Public IP via ipapi.co, and Network Quality — five HTTPS probes to Cloudflare.

What can leave your Mac: a Public IP refresh (ipapi.co) and Network Quality — five HTTPS probes to Cloudflare — both only when you start them. Results show in the UI and are not stored as telemetry.

What’s new

Shipped in 1.6.0

Build 137 — July 2026.

v1.6.0 · Build 137

Dashboard cards & pin window

Movable cards, in-place add and remove, density and Focus, a floating pin across Spaces, volume actions, network quality and adaptive sampling.

v1.4.6 · Build 134

System Pulse & onboarding

New app icon, Quiet / Balanced / Detailed profiles, contextual notification permission and a compact health header.

Earlier 1.4.x

Widgets, themes, Settings

Dedicated metric widgets, Glass and Dark themes, Menu Bar / Dashboard / History / Health tabs and searchable Help.

Questions

Before you buy.

Does it need Full Disk Access?

No. Specto is sandboxed and reads system counters through public macOS APIs. The only permission it may ask for is Location, and only because some macOS versions gate the Wi‑Fi network name behind it.

Which Macs are supported?

Apple Silicon and Intel, macOS 14 or later. One universal binary, no separate builds.

Is it really one payment?

Yes. £14.99 buys 1.x outright, on every Mac you own. No renewal, no account.

Is there a trial?

A 14-day trial runs the full app with nothing held back. No card needed to start.

What about 2.0?

Anything in the 1.x line is included. A major release would be a separate, optional upgrade.

How do I get support?

Open an issue on GitHub, or use the Help window inside the app — it’s searchable and offline.

One Mac. One menu bar app.

Specto is in final testing. Start with a 14-day trial, then one payment of £14.99 — every Mac you own, no renewal.

One-off purchase

£14.99 once

Buy it, keep it. Every Mac you own, all 1.x updates included, no subscription.