bottom — Beautiful Cross-Platform System Monitor in Rust

What it is

bottom (btm) is a terminal-based system monitor written in Rust using Ratatui. It displays real-time CPU, memory, network, disk, temperature, and process information through interactive charts. It works on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

The tool targets developers and system administrators who want a visually rich alternative to top, htop, or btop without leaving the terminal. It supports TOML-based configuration for customizing layouts, colors, and widget placement.

How it saves time or tokens

bottom consolidates the output of multiple monitoring tools into a single dashboard. Instead of switching between top for processes, iotop for disk, and nethogs for network, one command gives you everything. The interactive UI lets you filter, sort, and drill into specific metrics without piping output through grep or awk.

Installation is a single command on every major platform, and the binary is self-contained with no runtime dependencies.

How to use

1. Install bottom via your package manager: brew install bottom, cargo install bottom, or sudo apt install bottom.
2. Run btm to launch the interactive dashboard with default layout.
3. Customize the display with flags like --rate 500 for faster refresh, --basic for minimal mode, or --default_widget_type proc to focus on processes.

Example

# Install and run
brew install bottom
btm

# Custom refresh rate and minimal mode
btm --rate 500 --basic

# Focus on process view
btm --default_widget_type proc

# Use a custom config
btm -C ~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml

Related on TokRepo

• Automation tools -- CLI utilities and developer productivity tools
• DevOps tools -- Infrastructure monitoring and operations

Common pitfalls

• On Debian-based systems the binary is named btm, but the package is bottom. Running apt install bottom installs the correct package.
• The default layout shows all widgets. If your terminal window is small, widgets overlap. Use --basic or a custom TOML layout to reduce widget count.
• Temperature sensors require lm-sensors on Linux. Without it, the temperature widget shows no data.