macOS menu-bar utility

SystemWoe

What on earth (Woe) is my system doing? See who’s using CPU, memory, disk, and network — in plain English — then free what’s safe.

Woe is short for What on earth?We briefly hesitated over a more… explicit expansion. App Store reviewers (and polite dinner guests) thank us for stopping.

SystemWoe Overview — situation-first meters and culprits

Questions we answer

Activity Monitor shows numbers. SystemWoe names the culprits — and what to do next.

What is my disk doing?

Host disk + swap strip, cause chips (Spotlight, Time Machine, swap, Bonjour, Docker), and top writers — not just a sorted process table.

Free · paths in Pro

What is this mystery process?

A growing encyclopedia explains Spotlight helpers, browsers, daemons, and more — available offline and kept current on Free and Pro.

Free + Pro

How do I free capacity safely?

Ranked Free Resources actions with keep-guards. Quit your own apps on Free; Pro adds force-terminate and Docker stop — never silent cleanup, never quit Docker Desktop.

Free + Pro

What are my ports attached to?

Scan listening ports and see which process bound them. Soft or hard kill with keep-guards — no mystery lsof hunt.

Pro

Is Docker the reason I’m out of RAM?

Observe container CPU, memory, and disk I/O. Inventory stays optional and observe-only.

Pro

See it on a busy Mac

Situation-first Overview, Disk Now, Network Flows, encyclopedia inspector, Docker, jobs, thermals, and more — tour every surface with live captures.

Free vs Pro

Two products, one mission. Purchasing Pro does not unlock features inside the Mac App Store Free app — Free stays free.

CapabilityFree (App Store)Pro (direct)
Menu bar + Now meters / situationYesYes
Process encyclopedia (download + submit)YesYes
Disk Now — writers, swap, cause chipsYesYes
Sortable disk / network MB/sBest-effortFull
Open-files snapshotYesYes
Quit own user apps + copy recipesYesYes
Force-terminate / Soft+Hard port killYes
Path Sample / Watch + FS ActivityOpt-in
Spotlight & Time Machine live panelsExplain onlyLive + recipes
Exclude tips (e.g. node_modules)Generic tipEvidence + copy
Network ports & destinationsScan / Live
Docker inventory & statsObserve-only
Background jobs / scheduled agentsExplain onlyInventory
Thermals & Power (powermetrics)On demand
Local history + CSV export~60s in memoryTiered DB
Prometheus scrape (127.0.0.1)Opt-in · Settings → Integrations
MCP server (read-only local tools)Opt-in · Cursor / Claude Desktop
Inspector · Homebrew · advisoriesLimitedOn demand
Channel & updatesMac App StoreNotarized + Sparkle
Price$0Pro $49 / Duo $69

Disk rates are estimates (macOS buffer cache). Ports are snapshots, not packet capture. Prometheus and MCP bind to loopback only; MCP tools are read-only. SystemWoe never silently kills processes, writes exclude lists, or quits Docker Desktop.