Vitals Adds App-Level Mac Monitoring and MCP Queries for AI Assistants

Vitals monitors CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU, battery, temperature and other hardware indicators in real time. It presents them in a standalone window, in the menu bar and through an MCP service. In the overview, the app combines six hardware areas—CPU, memory, GPU, disk, network and battery—on one page, with numbers, charts, progress indicators and status information. The page shows current readings and recent changes; users can move from the overview to detail pages for CPU, memory, disk, network, GPU, sound, Bluetooth and projects.

The app's main distinction is its app-level accounting. Activity Monitor already provides hardware monitoring and process management on macOS, but users who want to know which application is consuming resources must identify processes and add up the figures themselves, according to the report. Vitals assigns processes to their parent apps and shows CPU, memory, energy, disk and network use at the app level. Users can compare apps and then expand one app to see its processes. The report gives examples such as Chrome using too much memory or VS Code slowing a Mac during compilation.

Vitals also keeps historical records and supports app-specific resource alerts. Users can compare resource use over time, see whether an app has remained under high load or whether its memory use has continued to grow, and set alerts that fire when an app exceeds a specified memory level for a period. The report says this helps distinguish a short spike from sustained abnormal activity when a Mac becomes sluggish, hot, noisy or drains battery quickly.

The MCP integration is another major feature. According to the report, Vitals supports AI assistants including Claude, Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. After users enable AI assistant queries in the app's integration settings and connect a supported tool, they can ask natural-language questions such as how much memory the Mac is using, which apps are driving high CPU load or whether development servers are running. Vitals' official privacy statement says the app records system and app resource history locally, does not require an account and does not proactively send those monitoring data to Vitals' servers, the report says.

Vitals offers three chart color schemes—Vitals, monochrome and accessibility—and settings for number fonts, font weight and layout density, with live preview. It can export the current system state as an image and historical records as CSV, including daily app data, hourly Mac data and five-minute system readings, according to the report. The app also supports always-on-top windows and menu bar displays for CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, temperature, battery and power, with red highlighting when readings enter high-load levels. For developers, a projects view groups development processes, development servers and open ports.

Vitals is sold as a one-time purchase that includes updates, with no subscription. According to the report, the website showed a price of $9 as of publication, with a regular price of $39; buyers can request a refund within 14 days. The report said the price is part of a phased launch and that the actual price and remaining discount slots are subject to the official website.