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TOP(1) General Commands Manual TOP(1)

top — display sorted information about processes

top [-a | -d | -e | -c mode]
 

The top program periodically displays a sorted list of system processes. The default sorting key is pid, but other keys can be used instead. Various output options are available.

Command line option specifications are processed from left to right. Options can be specified more than once. If conflicting options are specified, later specifications override earlier ones. This makes it viable to create a shell alias for top with preferred defaults specified, then override those preferred defaults as desired on the command line.

Equivalent to -c a.
mode
Set event counting mode to mode. The supported modes are
a
Accumulative mode. Count events cumulatively, starting at the launch of top. Calculate CPU usage and CPU time since the launch of top.
d
Delta mode. Count events relative to the previous sample. Calculate CPU usage since the previous sample. This mode by default disables the memory object map reporting. The memory object map reporting may be re-enabled with the -r option or the interactive r command.
e
Absolute mode. Count events using absolute counters.
n
Non-event mode (default). Calculate CPU usage since the previous sample.
Equivalent to -c d.
Equivalent to -c e.
Do not calculate statistics on shared libraries, also known as frameworks.
Calculate statistics on shared libraries, also known as frameworks (default).
Print command line usage information and exit.
interval
Update framework (-f) info every interval samples; see the PERFORMANCE/ACCURACY TRADEOFF section for more details.
samples
Use logging mode and display samples samples, even if standard output is a terminal. 0 is treated as infinity. Rather than redisplaying, output is periodically printed in raw form. Note that the first sample displayed will have an invalid %CPU displayed for each process, as it is calculated using the delta between samples.
columns
Display columns when using logging mode. The default is infinite. The number must be > 0 or an error will occur.
nprocs
Only display up to nprocs processes.
skey
Use skey as a secondary key when ordering the process display. See -o for key names (pid is the default).
key
Order the process display by sorting on key in descending order. A + or - can be prefixed to the key name to specify ascending or descending order, respectively. The supported keys are:
pid
Process ID
command
Command name.
cpu
CPU usage. (default).
cpu_me
CPU time charged to me by other processes.
cpu_others
CPU time charged to other processes by me.
csw
The number of context switches.
time
Execution time.
threads
alias: th
Number of threads (total/running).
ports
alias: prt
Number of Mach ports.
mregion
alias: mreg, reg
Number of memory regions.
mem
Physical memory footprint of the process.
rprvt
Resident private address space size.
purg
Purgeable memory size.
vsize
Total memory size.
vprvt
Private address space size.
kprvt
Private kernel memory size.
kshrd
Shared kernel memory size.
pgrp
Process group ID.
ppid
Parent process ID.
state
alias: pstate
Process state.
One of "zombie", "running", "stuck" (i.e. uninterruptible sleep), "sleeping", "idle", "stopped", "halted", or "unknown".
uid
User ID.
wq
alias: #wq, workqueue
The workqueue total/running.
faults
alias: fault
The number of page faults.
cow
alias: cow_faults
The copy-on-write faults.
user
alias: username
Username.
msgsent
Total number of Mach messages sent.
msgrecv
Total number of Mach messages received.
sysbsd
Total BSD syscalls.
sysmach
Total Mach syscalls.
pageins
Total pageins.
boosts
The number of boosts held by the process. This is followed by the number of times the process has transitioned from unboosted to boosted in brackets. An asterisk before the value indicates that the process was able to send boosts at some point since the previous update. For more information about boosts, see xpc_transaction_begin(3).
instrs
The number of instructions retired by the process in both user space and the kernel.
cycles
The number of cycles spent executing instructions in the process in both user space and the kernel.
Do not traverse and report the memory object map for each process (default).
Traverse and report the memory object map for each process.
Display the global statistics for swap and purgeable memory.
delay-secs
Set the delay between updates to delay-secs seconds. The default delay between updates is 1 second.
keys
Only display the comma separated statistics. See the -o flag for the valid keys.
processid
Only display processid in top. This option may be specified multiple times.
user
Only display processes owned by user
user
This is an alias for -user.
This is an alias equivalent to: -o cpu -O time

The first several lines of the top display show various global state. All of the information is labeled. Following is an alphabetical list of global state fields and their descriptions.

CPU
Percentage of processor usage, broken into user, system, and idle components. The time period for which these percentages are calculated depends on the event counting mode.
Disks
Number and total size of disk reads and writes.
LoadAvg
Load average over 1, 5, and 15 minutes. The load average is the average number of jobs in the run queue.
MemRegions
Number and total size of memory regions, and total size of memory regions broken into private (broken into non-library and library) and shared components.
Networks
Number and total size of input and output network packets.
PhysMem
Physical memory usage, broken into wired, active, inactive, used, and free components.
Procs
Total number of processes and number of processes in each process state.
SharedLibs
Resident sizes of code and data segments, and link editor memory usage.
Threads
Number of threads.
Time
Time, in H:MM:SS format. When running in logging mode, Time is in YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS format by default, but may be overridden with accumulative mode. When running in accumulative event counting mode, the Time is in HH:MM:SS since the beginning of the top process.
VirtMem
Total virtual memory, virtual memory consumed by shared libraries, and number of pageins and pageouts.
Swap
Swap usage: total size of swap areas, amount of swap space in use and amount of swap space available.
Purgeable
Number of pages purged and number of pages currently purgeable.

Below the global state fields, a list of processes is displayed. The fields that are displayed depend on the options that are set. The pid field displays the following for the architecture:

+ for 64-bit native architecture, or - for 32-bit native architecture, or * for a non-native architecture.

When top is run in interactive (non-logging) mode, it is possible to control the output of top, as well as interactively send signals to processes. The interactive command syntax is terse. Each command is one character, followed by 0 to 2 arguments. Commands that take arguments prompt interactively for the arguments, and where applicable, the default value is shown in square brackets. The default value can be selected by leaving the input field blank and pressing enter. ^G escapes the interactive argument prompt, and has the same effect as leaving the input field blank and pressing enter.

The following commands are supported:

?
Display the help screen. Any character exits help screen mode. This command always works, even in the middle of a command.
^L
Redraw the screen.
cmode
Set output mode to mode. See the -c option for descriptions of the allowed modes.
Oskey
Use skey as a secondary key when ordering the process display. See the -o option for key names.
okey
Order the process display by sorting on key in descending order. A + or - can be prefixed to the key name to specify ascending or descending order, respectively. The supported keys and alises are listed with the -o option above.
q
Quit.
r
Toggle traversal and reporting of the memory object map for each process.
Ssignalpid
Send signal signal to pid. signal can be specified either as a number or as a name (for example, HUP). The default signal starts out as TERM. Each time a signal is successfully sent, the default signal is updated to be that signal. pid is a process id.
s delay-secs
Set the delay between updates to delay-secs seconds.
U user
Only display processes owned by user. Either the username or uid number can be specified. To display all processes, press enter without entering a username or uid number.

Calculating detailed memory statistics is fundamentally resource-intensive. To reduce the CPU usage in top, the -i option has been introduced to allow the user to tune this tradeoff. With the default value of 10, framework stats will be updated once every 10 samples. Specifying -i 1 will result in the most accurate display, at the expense of system resources.

When N/A occurs in a stat, it's caused by the memory object map reporting being disabled. Memory object map reporting is disabled by default in delta mode, but may be optionally enabled via -r or the interactive r command. To enable the -r option, use it after any -c mode options.

top -o cpu -O +rsize -s 5 -n 20
Sort the processes according to CPU usage (descending) and resident memory size (ascending), sample and update the display at 5 second intervals, and limit the display to 20 processes.
top -c d
Run top in delta mode.
top -stats pid,command,cpu,th,pstate,time
Display only the specified statistics, regardless of any growth of the terminal. If the terminal is too small, only the statistics that fit will be displayed.

taskinfo(1), vm_stat(1), vmmap(1), kill(2), signal(3)

February 10, 2020 Darwin