The Monitoring section shows what your sites and services cost your computer — and which one is the hungry cat. The menu bar app (the system tray icon on Windows) keeps DevCatz one click away: start and stop sites and services without opening the window. Both are on macOS and Windows.
The Monitoring page
This Mac / This PC
Four cards at the top, under a This MacPC line that sums up everything DevCatz runs as a share of the whole computer’s CPU. Each card has a sparkline:
| Card | Shows |
|---|---|
| CPU | The whole computer’s CPU use and the load average, and DevCatz’s share of it |
| Memory | Memory used, memory pressure and swapand the page file |
| Disk | Free space on the system drive |
| Network | Traffic in and out, for all apps on this computer |
The numbers come from ps, nettop, vm_stat and a small disk helper, the way Activity Monitor reads them.
On Windows one PowerShell process stays open and answers each sample: it reads what Task Manager reads — each process tree’s private working set, CPU time and I/O, the free memory and page file, the network adapters’ counters. Windows has no load average or memory-pressure level, so those do not appear.
The table
Below the cards, a row per thing DevCatz runs, with its own sparklines. Filter it with All, Sites, Services, Containers or DevCatz, and tick Show stopped to see the rest too.
CPU is counted per core, like Activity MonitorResource Monitor: 100% is one core fully busy, so a row can go above 100% on a computer with several cores. Per-site network traffic is not measured on Windows — the Network column shows — and the Network card counts the whole PC.
A row’s detail
Click a row for:
- charts of CPU, Memory, Network in / out and Disk read / write over 1 h, 6 h or 24 h,
- the listening ports and open TCP connections,
- Open site, Open database or Open storage to jump to it,
- the size of the installed build, apart from its data (+ 62 MB installed, for example).
Export CSV
Export CSV saves the numbers: Last hour (every sample), Last 6 hours (per minute) or Last 24 hours (per minute).
Dependencies cleanup
The Dependencies view lists every site’s dependency folders — node_modules, vendor/, Python virtual
environments and Rust target/ — with their Size and when the site was Last used.
- Filter by All, not used for 30 days or not used for 90 days.
- Select several sites and free the space in one go, or open one site’s Settings → Free up space.
- Only stopped sites can be cleaned; a running one says Running: stop it first.
- The folders go to the TrashRecycle Bin, so you can still take them back. Install dependencies on a site brings them back too.
Settings → Monitoring
Sampling
| Option | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Sample every … while the Monitoring page is open | 2 s (1, 2, 3 or 5 s) | One sample costs a few milliseconds of ps, nettop and a disk-I/O helper of the PowerShell sampler |
| Keep sampling in the background | — | Every 15 s while the page is closed, so the charts open with an hour of history and alerts work |
| Show usage in the menu barsystem tray menu | — | Shows Monitor · CPU · memory for sites & services under the sites line |
History is saved to monitor/history.json in the data folder — 24 hours, one point per minute.
Alerts
Off by default. When one is on, DevCatz sends a macOSWindows notification — at most once an hour per item.
| Alert | Default |
|---|---|
| CPU above (%) | 90 (per core: 100 = one core fully busy) |
| Memory above (MB) | 2048 |
| For at least (minutes) | 5 — how long CPU or memory must stay high |
| Disk free below (GB) | 10 |
Alerts need Keep sampling in the background to notice sustained use while the page is closed.
The menu bar app
DevCatz puts an icon in the menu bar — on Windows, in the system tray. The icon changes when anything runs, and its tooltip says DevCatz: N of M sites running. Closing the window keeps DevCatz there, and Launch at login (Settings → General) starts in the menu barsystem tray without a window. Click the icon for this menu, from top to bottom:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Sites (n/m running) | Your sites |
| Create New Site… | Opens the new-site dialog |
| Monitor · CPU · memory | The live line, when it is switched on in Settings → Monitoring |
| Mail · N new / N caught / catcher off | Open Inbox, Start Mail Server / Stop Mail Server — see Mail |
| A line per WhatsApp engine | GOWA (WhatsApp) · N linked — Open, Start, Stop, Restart |
| A line per gateway | Stalwart (email) · status — Open, Start, Stop, Restart — see Gateways |
| Shared sites | Per share: Copy URL, Open, Requests…, Stop sharing — see Expose |
| Start All / Stop All | Every site at once |
| Services | Proxy (nginx); DNS (dnsmasq) — not needed for .localhost; a PHP-FPM line per PHP version in use, with its site countProxy; a PHP (FastCGI) line per PHP version in use, with its site count (DevCatz’s DNS has no line here); Restart Services |
| Databases | Per instance, name · status → Engine version · 127.0.0.1:port, Start / Stop, Restart. With none: Set up a database… |
| Object Storage | Per service: Start / Stop, Restart, Open Console, Open API. With none: Set up storage… |
| WebSocket and Search Engine | Installed servers only, with Start / Stop / Restart and Open in DevCatz |
| Runtime Updates (N)… | Newer patches of your PHP, Go, Bun and Node.js — see Runtimes |
| Update to x.y.z… / Check for Updates… | DevCatz’s own update — see Settings |
| Settings… | mod+, |
| Quit | mod+Q — stops everything DevCatz runs |
The app menu at the top of the screen has About DevCatz and Check for Updates…, and its Help menu has Report a Bug…, Send Feedback… and DevCatz Docs (this site).
The window has no menu bar of its own; press the Alt key to show the hidden one: File (Settings, Quit DevCatz), Edit, View and Help with Report a Bug…, Send Feedback… and DevCatz Docs (this site). About lives under Settings → About.
Limits
- Samples are only taken while the page is open, unless background sampling is on.
- Monitoring reads
ps,nettopandlsof.On Windows there is no load average and no per-site network traffic. - The Dependencies cleanup only touches stopped sites.
Last updated 2026-11-01