NeoHtop is a cross-platform system monitor designed as a modern alternative to traditional CLI tools like htop. Built with Rust for performance and Tauri+Svelte for a responsive desktop UI, it provides real-time visibility into CPU, memory usage, and running processes without requiring terminal expertise. It targets developers, system administrators, and power users who want an intuitive, visually appealing interface for monitoring system activity across macOS, Linux, and Windows. Unlike text-based tools, NeoHtop offers interactive filtering, process pinning, and theme support while maintaining low overhead through its Rust backend.
What You Get
- Real-time process monitoring - Continuously updates live process data including PID, CPU and memory usage, user, and command line without manual refresh.
- Advanced process search and filtering - Supports comma-separated terms, regular expressions (e.g.,
d$ for daemons or ^(\w+\.)+\w+$ for reverse domain notation), and case-insensitive matching to filter processes by name or command.
- Beautiful modern UI with dark/light themes - Dynamically switches between themes based on system preferences using CSS variables, enhancing usability in low-light environments.
- Process management (kill processes) - Allows users to terminate unresponsive or unwanted processes directly from the UI with a single click.
- Sort by any column - Click headers to sort processes by CPU, memory, PID, or other metrics in ascending or descending order.
- Auto-refresh system stats - Automatically updates all monitoring data at configurable intervals without user intervention.
- Cross-platform support - Officially supports macOS, Linux (including Arch, Fedora, Solus), and Windows via native package managers and installers.
Common Use Cases
- Building a multi-tenant SaaS dashboard with real-time resource insights - Developers use NeoHtop to monitor backend processes on local development machines, ensuring no service is consuming excessive CPU or memory during testing.
- Debugging resource-heavy applications on macOS - Users track down processes like
com.docker.vmnetd using regex filtering to identify Docker-related resource leaks without leaving the GUI.
- Problem → Solution flow: Terminal-based htop is too cluttered for quick inspection → NeoHtop provides a clean, filterable UI with one-click process termination - Users frustrated by complex htop commands switch to NeoHtop for faster, visual process management.
- DevOps teams managing microservices across multiple cloud providers - Engineers use NeoHtop on their local machines to simulate and monitor how containerized services behave under load before deploying to remote environments.
Under The Hood
NeoHtop is a cross-platform system monitoring desktop application that combines the reactive UI capabilities of Svelte with the performance and system access of Rust through the Tauri framework. It provides a modern, visually enhanced interface for tracking system processes and resource usage with a focus on user experience and extensibility.
Architecture
This project adopts a layered architecture that cleanly separates frontend UI components from backend system monitoring logic, leveraging Tauri’s native capabilities for efficient low-level access.
- The frontend follows a component-based structure with well-defined modules for UI elements, process management, and stats display, promoting reusability and maintainability
- The backend utilizes Tauri’s Rust-based architecture to enable direct system monitoring while maintaining a clean API for frontend consumption
- Modular organization is evident in how components are grouped into logical categories such as process, stats, toolbar, and modals, each with dedicated subdirectories and index files for easy imports
- Component interactions are managed through state stores and clear data flow patterns, ensuring predictable updates from system metrics to UI rendering
Tech Stack
Built as a modern desktop application, the project uses Svelte and Rust with Tauri to deliver a responsive and performant system monitor.
- The frontend is developed using Svelte 5 and TypeScript, with Tauri as the core framework for cross-platform desktop deployment
- Key dependencies include Tauri APIs, FontAwesome for iconography, and Svelte-Fa for seamless icon rendering within the UI
- Development tools include Vite for building and development, SvelteKit for routing, and Husky for pre-commit hooks to enforce code standards
- The project integrates linting and formatting through Prettier and Cargo fmt, with CI workflows supporting build and format validation
Code Quality
The codebase reflects a moderate level of quality with consistent error handling and component organization, although improvements in testing and style consistency are evident.
- Error handling is broadly implemented using try/catch blocks, particularly in UI and store files, ensuring robustness across components
- Code follows naming conventions and component structure with clear separation of concerns, though some inconsistencies in documentation and style remain
- Testing coverage is limited, with minimal automated test files suggesting that most functionality is validated through manual or integration checks
- Technical debt indicators include duplicated logic in component implementations and a lack of comprehensive unit tests to support long-term maintainability
What Makes It Unique
NeoHtop stands out through its innovative blend of modern UI design and native system monitoring, offering a visually distinct approach to desktop process management.
- The integration of Tauri’s plugin ecosystem enables efficient system-level data access while maintaining a Svelte frontend for intuitive UI development
- Creative use of glassmorphism effects and theme stores allows dynamic visual adaptation based on user preferences and platform capabilities
- Platform-aware UI design selectively enables glassy effects on Windows and macOS, demonstrating thoughtful cross-platform support
- Modular component architecture separates UI concerns from system monitoring logic, enabling extensibility for future metrics or visualization enhancements