llms.txt
# iKnowMyMac
> iKnowMyMac turns 1,000 processes into the apps you know, then tells you in one line what's slowing your Mac down and what to do about it. Native app for Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later; one-time purchase.
Key facts:
- What it is: a native Swift/SwiftUI Mac app that tells you why your Mac is slow, not just what's running.
- Requirements: macOS 15 Sequoia or later · Apple silicon. Intel Macs are not supported.
- Download: 24.6 MB DMG, Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple, updates through Sparkle. Not on the Mac App Store because the sandbox blocks reading other processes.
- Pricing: one-time purchase, every feature included, free updates, 14-day refund, no free trial.
- Launch price, per Mac, for 1-, 2- and 5-Mac licenses: $4.99 for the first 100 licenses, then $9.99 for the next 150 licenses, then $14.99 for the next 200 licenses, then the regular $24.99. 10/25/50-Mac bundles open after the launch.
- Multi-Mac licenses (regular price): 2 Macs $49.98, 5 Macs $84.99, 10 Macs $149.99, 25 Macs $339.99, 50 Macs $599.99.
- Privacy: the app has no account, no analytics and no telemetry. Its only network requests are the update check, license activation/validation, and opt-in crash reports (off by default). It reads status from local model servers on 127.0.0.1, which never leaves the Mac. Verify with GitHub, off by default, makes one SSH handshake per key with the user's Git host to learn its account name, with no API token. Background fetch, off by default, runs git fetch on known repos every 30 minutes, to their own remotes only. File search indexes file and folder names only, never file contents, and its index stays on the Mac. A request made from the app is sent to iknowmymac.com only when the user presses Send, after a preview; the title typed is looked up for similar requests. Problem reports are sent only on Send, with diagnostics only if the user ticks them. Agent Undo keeps copies of the files in folders where coding agents work, on the Mac only: they are never uploaded, the newest change can be missed, git history is not covered, and it is not a backup.
- Git identity scope: reads Git config, remotes, refs, commit author metadata and status counts on the Mac, never repo contents or diffs. It is not a Git client: no staging, diffs, branch or merge tools.
- Company: iDevelopApps. Support: support@iknowmymac.com. Payments: Dodo Payments (Merchant of Record).
- Sound tab: Your output device and its level, every app playing sound, and a volume slider and mute for each app, in the app and right from the menu bar.
- Bluetooth tab: Every paired device with its kind and the battery it reports, which are connected and which are away, and the lowest battery named.
- Arrange everything: Choose which tabs, sections, popover tiles and menu bar items appear, and in what order. One Reset puts it back.
- A menu bar item per readout: CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, temperature, battery or volume, each as its own menu bar item: a value, a graph or both.
- Units: Celsius or Fahrenheit, bytes or bits, CPU per core or per Mac, previewed with your Mac's own figures.
- Dock mode: An optional Dock icon. Open the app by hand and it shows its window; at login it stays in the menu bar.
- Notch alerts: On MacBooks with a notch, alerts grow out of the notch with what happened and what to do, then get out of the way.
- Storage map: What's filling your disk: folders ranked by size, large files, old downloads and dev caches. Nothing moves until you confirm.
- Complete uninstall: One page per app with its history and disk footprint. Remove completely lists every file before it goes to the Trash.
- Keep awake: Keep your Mac awake for a set time, while an app runs, while a build or dev server is busy, or until a download finishes.
- Mac health report: A one-page PDF with model, chip, memory, SSD wear, battery health and cycles, for selling a Mac or a support ticket.
- Disk speed test: An on-demand sequential read and write test with a share card. The temporary file is deleted afterwards.
- Wi-Fi quality: Signal, noise, signal-to-noise ratio, channel, band and link rate, next to your network figures.
- What is this?: Right-click any app or process: what it does in plain words, whether it's safe to quit, why it's busy right now and the one fix.
- Device battery alerts: A heads-up when your AirPods, keyboard, mouse, trackpad or Mac run low, and when they finish charging. Once per charge, so it never nags.
- Is it my Wi-Fi or the internet?: One press checks your Wi-Fi, your router, DNS and the internet in order, then says in one sentence where the problem is. Plus alerts when the connection drops and comes back.
- Command palette: Press ⌥⌘K over any app, type a few letters, and quit an app, stop a process or free a port without touching the mouse. Destructive actions still ask first.
- What iKnowMyMac costs you: The app's own CPU, memory and energy, shown in the popover and Settings. When nothing of ours is on screen, it reads only what your alerts need, every 15 seconds.
- Updates coverage: A public list of the apps iKnowMyMac can update, with the source it reads for each one and how it checks every download before installing.
- Updates tab: Finds updates for your other apps from their own feeds, Homebrew, GitHub and the App Store, checks every download, keeps a backup and can undo.
- Local AI models: Which local models are loaded in Ollama, LM Studio or llama.cpp, the memory each one holds, your Mac's GPU memory limit, and “Will it fit?” for a model before you download it. Works offline.
- Agent sessions: Every Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cursor agent, Aider or OpenCode session, the processes and ports it started, and what it left running after it ended. Stop leftovers with one confirmation.
- New at login alerts: Tells you when an app quietly adds a login item, background service or launch agent: what it is, which app added it, who signed it and when it runs.
- Backup health: Your last Time Machine backup in the popover, and an alert when backups stop: no backup in 3 days, the backup disk away for 7 days, or 3 failures in a row.
- Git identity map: Every repo with the email it commits as and the file and line that sets it, the key it pushes with, the GitHub CLI account and the signing key, with mismatches named in plain words. Repo contents are never read.
- Identity profiles: Work and Personal profiles applied by folder or by remote owner, written as Git's own includeIf rules after you review the exact diff. Undo restores ~/.gitconfig byte for byte.
- GitHub CLI account switcher: The active GitHub CLI account for each host in the menu bar, switched with gh's own gh auth switch. The app never reads a token.
- Wrong identity alerts: An alert within seconds of a commit made with the wrong email, and a fix for that commit if it isn't pushed yet.
- Repo status: Branch, unpushed and unpulled commits, uncommitted changes and old stashes for every repo you work in, and “3 repos have unpushed work” in the popover.
- Agent commit identity: Each coding agent session lists the commits the agent made and the author it used, flagged when it's the wrong one.
- Always-on mode (Beta): Turn your old MacBook into a Mac mini: it stays awake with the lid closed while on power, reachable over SSH and Screen Sharing, and every setting goes back the moment you turn it off, quit or uninstall. In Beta.
- Readiness check: One screen that answers “Is this Mac ready to run unattended?”: power, wake for network access, Screen Sharing, Remote Login, FileVault and restarts, automatic updates, heat headroom and free space, each with a fix or the right Settings pane.
- Heat and battery guards: While Always-on is on: an alert when the Mac runs hot or loses power, and it lets the Mac sleep when it stays critical for 20 minutes or runs low on battery.
- Tidy for Downloads: Tidy your Downloads: installers you've already installed, archives you've already opened and exact duplicates, grouped by why they're safe to remove. Nothing moves until you confirm.
- Screenshots off the Desktop: Screenshots off the Desktop: new ones go to monthly folders in Screenshots, and your last ten wait in the menu bar, ready to drag or copy.
- Clear the Desktop: Clear the Desktop in one click: everything moves to a dated archive folder, files you touched in the last hour stay, and Undo puts it all back.
- Tidy log and undo: Every move Tidy makes is in the Tidy log, with the old and new place, and each one can be undone.
- Pulse trackpad materials: Pick a material for your trackpad, mist, ripples, cobbles, sand, mesh or vinyl grooves, and it clicks softly under your finger to match as you point, scroll and tap, in every app.
- Done tones: A soft tone the moment your coding agent or build is done, so you can stop watching the terminal.
- USB log: Your Mac remembers every USB and Thunderbolt device that connects to it, even while you're away.
- New keyboard alert: An alert the moment a new keyboard connects to your Mac, the classic sign of a disguised USB device.
- Slow cable check: A heads-up when a cable or hub slows a drive down: the speed it's getting next to the speed it supports.
- Safe look: Safe look: a read-only overview of what's on a drive before you open anything from it.
- Search anything: Find any file, folder or app on your Mac by name: press ⌥Space, type part of a name, and narrow it with filters such as ext:pdf, size:>100mb or mtime:7d. It searches names only, never what's inside files, and the index stays on your Mac.
- Search settings: Choose what Search covers: include or exclude folders, with node_modules, .git, DerivedData and caches left out by default, and hidden files off until you turn them on. See the index's size, rebuild it, or turn Search off, which deletes the index.
- Request a feature: Request a feature from inside the app. Similar requests appear as you type, so you can add your vote instead, and the request is sent only when you press Send, after a preview of what will leave your Mac. No account.
- Suggest a change to this screen: Every main screen's ⋯ menu has Suggest a change to this screen: the request sheet opens with the screen's name filled in and a picture of the iKnowMyMac window only, which you can remove before sending.
- Report a problem: Report a problem from the app: say what went wrong, see help articles that might answer it as you type, and choose whether to include diagnostics, which you can read and edit first. Reports are private.
- My requests and replies: My requests lists what you asked for or voted on with its status, and your problem reports with their replies. When something you asked for ships, the app tells you once: “You asked, we shipped”.
- One question after 14 days: After 14 days of use, the app asks once what it should do next. Not now asks once more after 30 days, then never, and a switch in Settings turns it off.
- Package Watch: When an npm or Python package is reported compromised, Package Watch says whether it is on your Mac, where it sits, what pulls it in and what to do. The list of known-bad versions is downloaded whole and matched on your Mac, so nothing about your packages is sent anywhere.
- Look up any package: Type a package name, or name@version, and see every place it is on your Mac, grouped by version: projects, global installs and caches, with what pulls it in. It needs no list, so it answers in the first hours of an incident, before the public lists have caught up.
- Known holes: Per project, the packages that have a published critical or high vulnerability and a fixed release, with the version to move to. A separate, quiet tab that never notifies.
- Agent Undo: See what each coding agent session deleted, changed and added in your project folder, and put back one file, a few, or the whole folder as it was when the session started, including files that were never in git. Whatever a restore replaces is kept, so the restore can be undone too. The copies stay on your Mac. The newest change can be missed, and git history is not covered.
- Why did that fail?: Diagnose has a second tab, Something failed: what iKnowMyMac saw go wrong recently, each with what happened, the most likely reason and how sure it is, and what to do. When the cause can't be known from your Mac, it says so.
- A disk that vanished or won't eject: When a disk disappears without being ejected, iKnowMyMac says what happened and how sure it is; some causes look the same from the Mac, and it says that too. When a disk won't eject, it lists what is using it and offers Quit these and eject, with one confirmation.
- A sidebar that keeps one group open: On a new install the sidebar keeps one group open at a time and folds the others to a one-line summary, so it stays short as features are added. If you already use iKnowMyMac your sidebar stays as it is, and Keep all groups open in Settings switches either way.
- Browser tabs: See which browser tab uses the most memory: Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Vivaldi and Safari, split into their tabs, extensions and the browser itself, with Show and Close on each tab. iKnowMyMac never sees what's on your pages.
- Quieter alerts: On any alert, stop alerts about one app or turn that kind of alert off, and stop a message at the top of the screen for good from the message itself. The memory gauge waits until memory is seriously short.
- Measured: ±0.5% difference between our CPU, memory, disk and network figures and top, iostat, netstat and vm_stat on our test Mac.
- Measured: 1,200 / 1,200 seeded test runs where diagnosis ranked the right cause first.
- Measured: 94 MB for 30 days of history with 80 apps.
- Measured: 24.6 MB download. Native Swift and SwiftUI.
- Not available: Per-app network or per-app GPU numbers (network and GPU are system totals); Intel Macs (Apple silicon only) or macOS versions before 15 Sequoia; Widgets, Shortcuts, a command-line tool or a Raycast extension (not yet); Changing how your Mac charges its battery; Cleaning, “optimizing”, freeing RAM or scanning for malware (by design); A free trial (instead: a 14-day refund).
## Product
- [iKnowMyMac: Know why your Mac is slow](https://iknowmymac.com/)
- [Help centre](https://iknowmymac.com/support)
- [Feature requests](https://iknowmymac.com/feedback): Ask for a feature, vote on what others asked for, and see what is planned, in progress and shipped.
- [Roadmap](https://iknowmymac.com/roadmap): What is planned, in progress and recently shipped in iKnowMyMac, from the requests people voted for. No dates are promised.
- [Changelog](https://iknowmymac.com/changelog)
- [Films](https://iknowmymac.com/films): Short walkthrough films of what's new in each big release, newest first, with sound.
- [Press kit](https://iknowmymac.com/press)
- [About](https://iknowmymac.com/about): Who makes iKnowMyMac, why, and how often it ships.
- [Privacy policy](https://iknowmymac.com/privacy)
- [Terms of use](https://iknowmymac.com/terms)
- [Refund policy](https://iknowmymac.com/refund-policy)
- [Pricing](https://iknowmymac.com/pricing)
- [Download](https://iknowmymac.com/download)
- [Post about it, get 50% back](https://iknowmymac.com/post-for-refund)
- [Claim your post-for-refund](https://iknowmymac.com/post-for-refund/claim)
## Features
- [Features: diagnosis, timeline, sleep forensics and developer mode](https://iknowmymac.com/features): Everything iKnowMyMac does: why your Mac is slow, 30 days of history, what kept it awake overnight, dev servers by project, and every Core feature from app grouping to the menu bar.
- [Why is my Mac slow? Diagnosis in one click](https://iknowmymac.com/features/diagnosis): iKnowMyMac reads the last hour of your Mac's history, ranks the causes of a slowdown with evidence, and suggests one action for each. On-device and offline.
- [Timeline: scroll back through 30 days of Mac history](https://iknowmymac.com/features/timeline): Scrub back to the moment your Mac slowed down and see every app and metric as it was. 30 days of history, stored locally in about 94 MB.
- [Sleep and battery forensics for your Mac](https://iknowmymac.com/features/sleep-battery): See what is keeping your Mac awake, why it woke at 3 am, which apps drained the battery overnight, and how battery health changes over time.
- [Dev servers, ports, Docker and simulators by project](https://iknowmymac.com/features/developers): See every dev server and open port grouped by project, which ones have been idle for hours, who holds port 3000, Docker containers, iOS simulators and reclaimable dev disk.
## Comparisons
- [iKnowMyMac vs Activity Monitor, iStat Menus, Stats, CleanMyMac](https://iknowmymac.com/compare): Fair, dated comparisons of iKnowMyMac with Activity Monitor, iStat Menus, Stats and CleanMyMac, including where each of them is the better choice.
- [iKnowMyMac vs Activity Monitor: features and pricing compared](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/activity-monitor): A fair comparison of iKnowMyMac and Apple's Activity Monitor: what each shows, where Activity Monitor is better, and where iKnowMyMac explains why your Mac is slow.
- [iKnowMyMac vs iStat Menus: features and pricing compared](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/istat-menus): iKnowMyMac vs iStat Menus 7.5: features, pricing and who each app is for. iStat Menus is the broadest menu bar monitor; iKnowMyMac explains why your Mac is slow.
- [iKnowMyMac vs Stats: features and pricing compared](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/stats): iKnowMyMac vs Stats, the free open-source menu bar monitor: features, pricing and who each is for. Stats is free and MIT-licensed; iKnowMyMac explains why your Mac is slow.
- [iKnowMyMac vs CleanMyMac: features and pricing compared](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/cleanmymac): iKnowMyMac vs CleanMyMac: CleanMyMac is a cleaner and maintenance suite; iKnowMyMac explains what is slowing your Mac down and never cleans. Features and pricing compared.
- [iKnowMyMac vs DaisyDisk: features and pricing compared](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/daisydisk): iKnowMyMac vs DaisyDisk: DaisyDisk is a visual disk analyzer; iKnowMyMac's Storage map is one part of a Mac monitor that also explains why your Mac is slow. Features and prices compared.
- [iKnowMyMac compared with the apps it can stand in for](https://iknowmymac.com/compare/all): Every row of the comparison with iStat Menus, DaisyDisk and CleanMyMac, with prices, dated and sourced.
## Guides
- [Mac performance guides: slow Mac, battery drain and more](https://iknowmymac.com/guides): Practical guides to finding why your Mac is slow, why the battery drains overnight, and which Activity Monitor alternative fits, using tools that come with macOS.
- [Why is my Mac slow? How to find the cause in 5 minutes](https://iknowmymac.com/guides/why-is-my-mac-slow): A step-by-step guide to finding what is slowing your Mac down with Activity Monitor and Terminal: memory pressure, swap, CPU, heat and disk, and what to do about each.
- [Mac battery drain overnight: find what kept your Mac awake](https://iknowmymac.com/guides/mac-battery-drain-overnight): Why a MacBook loses battery while asleep, and how to find the cause with pmset: sleep assertions, wake reasons, dark wakes and the settings that control them.
- [Activity Monitor alternatives for Mac (2026), compared](https://iknowmymac.com/guides/activity-monitor-alternatives): Activity Monitor, iStat Menus, Stats, CleanMyMac, htop, btop and iKnowMyMac compared: what each is best at, price, requirements, and which fits your question.
- [What is memory pressure on a Mac, and when should you worry?](https://iknowmymac.com/guides/what-is-memory-pressure): Memory pressure explained: what the green, yellow and red graph in Activity Monitor means, why low free memory is normal, how swap fits in, and what to do when pressure stays high.
- [What is taking up space on my Mac? How to find it and get it back](https://iknowmymac.com/guides/what-is-taking-up-space-on-my-mac): Find what's filling y
