by Hisham Muhammad [email protected] (2004 - 2016)

This is htop, an interactive process viewer. It requires ncurses. It is developed primarily on Linux, but we also have code for running under FreeBSD and Mac OS X (help and testing are wanted for these platforms!)

This software has evolved considerably over the years, and is reasonably complete, but there is always room for improvement.

• In htop you can scroll the list vertically and horizontally to see all processes and full command lines.
• In top you are subject to a delay for each unassigned key you press (especially annoying when multi-key escape sequences are triggered by accident).
• htop starts faster (top seems to collect data for a while before displaying anything).
• In htop you don't need to type the process number to kill a process, in top you do.
• In htop you don't need to type the process number or the priority value to renice a process, in top you do.
• In htop you can kill multiple processes at once.
• top is older, hence, more tested.

This program is distributed as a standard autotools-based package. See the INSTALL file for detailed instructions.

When compiling from a release tarball, run:

./configure && make

For compiling sources downloaded from the Git repository, run:

./autogen.sh && ./configure && make

By default make install will install into /usr/local, for changing the path use ./configure --prefix=/some/path.

See the manual page (man htop) or the on-line help ('F1' or 'h' inside htop) for a list of supported key commands.

If not all keys work check your curses configuration.

GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL-2.0)