Watch live CPU and memory usage per process with htop
Launch an interactive process viewer with color meters for CPU cores, memory, and swap, plus search, sort, and kill controls.
01Command
$ htop02What it does
The top bars show per-core CPU, memory, and swap; the table lists each process with PID, user, CPU%, MEM%, and command. Press F6 to change the sort column (e.g. MEM% to find memory hogs), F4 to filter by name, F9 to send a signal such as SIGTERM to the selected process, and q to quit. Unlike top, htop scrolls horizontally so long commands stay readable, and mouse clicks work in most terminals. It runs fine over SSH and needs no root privileges to observe, only to kill other users' processes.
03Risk
04Undo
✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.
05Sources
- htop(1) — interactive process viewerEvidence: The htop man page describes it as an interactive text-mode process viewer that allows scrolling vertically and horizontally, unlike top.
- htop - an interactive process viewerEvidence: The official htop site describes real-time CPU, memory, and swap meters plus interactive process sorting and killing.
Last verified: 2026-09-17 · Category: System & Settings
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