bottom — Beautiful Cross-Platform System Monitor in Rust

Introduction

bottom is a terminal system monitor that combines the information of top, htop, and iotop into a single, beautiful interface. Built in Rust with Ratatui, it provides interactive charts for CPU, memory, network, and disk usage alongside a searchable process list with tree view.

With over 13,000 GitHub stars, bottom stands out for its cross-platform support (Linux, macOS, Windows), extensive customization via TOML config, and intuitive keyboard/mouse navigation.

What bottom Does

bottom provides real-time visualization of system resources: CPU usage per core, memory and swap usage, network I/O, disk I/O, temperatures (where available), and a process table with search, sort, and tree view. All displayed as interactive terminal charts.

Architecture Overview

[bottom (btm)]
Rust + Ratatui + crossterm
        |
+-------+-------+-------+
|       |       |       |
[CPU]   [Memory] [Network]
Per-core RAM/Swap Upload/
usage   usage    Download
charts  charts   charts
        |
+-------+-------+-------+
|       |       |       |
[Disk]  [Temp]  [Process]
Read/   CPU/GPU Table with
Write   sensors search,
I/O     temps   sort, tree

Self-Hosting & Configuration

# ~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml
[flags]
rate = 1000          # Update rate in ms
default_widget_type = "proc"
hide_avg_cpu = false
color = "gruvbox"
temperature_type = "celsius"
enable_gpu = true

# Custom layout
[[row]]
  [[row.child]]
    type = "cpu"
  [[row.child]]
    type = "mem"
[[row]]
  [[row.child]]
    type = "net"
  [[row.child]]
    type = "disk"
[[row]]
  [[row.child]]
    type = "proc"
    default = true

Key Features

• Interactive Charts — CPU, memory, network, disk as live graphs
• Process Manager — search, sort, filter, tree view, kill processes
• Cross-Platform — Linux, macOS, and Windows support
• GPU Monitoring — NVIDIA and AMD GPU utilization (where available)
• Custom Layouts — configure widget arrangement via TOML
• Color Themes — built-in themes (gruvbox, nord, etc.) and custom colors
• Mouse Support — click and scroll to interact with widgets
• Battery — battery status and charge level display

Comparison with Similar Tools

FAQ

Q: bottom vs btop vs htop — which should I use? A: bottom for interactive charts and Windows support. btop for the most beautiful TUI with GPU monitoring. htop for a lightweight, universal process viewer. All three are excellent.

Q: How do I kill a process? A: Navigate to the process table, select a process, press dd (Vim-style) or Delete to send SIGTERM. Press dd again on the confirmation to send SIGKILL.

Q: Can I use bottom over SSH? A: Yes. bottom works in any terminal, including SSH sessions. It adapts to the terminal size and uses minimal bandwidth.

Q: How do I customize the layout? A: Edit ~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml and define [[row]] and [[row.child]] sections to arrange widgets. Each child specifies a widget type (cpu, mem, net, disk, proc, temp).

Sources

• GitHub: https://github.com/ClementTsang/bottom
• Documentation: https://clementtsang.github.io/bottom
• Created by Clement Tsang
• License: MIT