macverdict

Stop watching graphs. macverdict tells you why your Mac was slow this week, and what to do about it.

Formerly called macpulse. If you installed it under that name, run macverdict setup once: it brings your history across and removes the old parts.

Activity Monitor, Stats and iStat Menus show you numbers right now, and leave the diagnosis to you. macverdict quietly samples your Mac in the background (about one second every 15 minutes) and turns weeks of history into four plain answers:

1. What's slowing me down? It blames the app that was actually the biggest memory or CPU user each time your Mac struggled, grouping helper processes so Chrome's 60 processes count as Chrome.
2. Do I need more RAM? A verdict from weeks of memory pressure and swap, not the misleading "memory used" figure, including what to buy next time.
3. How long will my battery last? Your real wear rate vs. Apple's rating, and roughly when you'll hit 80% capacity.
4. Is my Air overheating? How often the fanless MacBook Air slowed itself down to cool off, and which apps were running when it did.

$ macverdict insights          # illustration: three weeks on an 8 GB MacBook Air
macverdict insights · MacBook Air · 8.0 GB RAM · last 30 days

● What's slowing you down
  Google Chrome was the biggest memory user in 85% of your 794 slowdown moments.
    · Google Chrome: the biggest memory user in 85% of slowdowns, typically 5.0 GB.
    · Final Cut Pro: the biggest CPU user in 15% of slowdowns.
    · Biggest win: quit or trim Google Chrome when your Mac feels slow.

● Do you need more RAM?
  8 GB isn't enough for how you work. Your next Mac should have 16 GB.
    · Memory pressure was elevated in 33% of samples.
    · Swap: typically under 9.0 GB, peak 13.5 GB.

● How long will your battery last?
  At your pace, it reaches 80% capacity around May 2027.
    · It's wearing faster than Apple's rating: 3.8% of capacity per 100 cycles, vs 2% expected.

● Is your Air overheating?
  Your Mac slowed itself down to cool off in 6% of samples.
    · Busiest apps when it ran hot: Final Cut Pro.

See it on a real Mac

A real week on a MacBook Air (Apple M5, 16 GB). macverdict report turns the history into a page like this. Open the full sample report.

The trends make the story visible: memory pressure (shaded) on Mon 19 and Tue 20, matching the swap spike, then a quiet rest of the week.

Free and open source, one dependency (psutil), no sudo, no cloud: nothing leaves your Mac. Built for Apple-silicon MacBooks, works on any Mac running macOS 12+.

How it compares

Use macverdict alongside a live monitor, not instead of one. If you want to watch GPU power or fan speed in real time, Stats and macmon are excellent. macverdict answers the questions those tools can't: what happened over the last few weeks, and what you should change.

Everyday health check

$ macverdict
macverdict · Apple M5 · macOS 26.5.2 · 16.0 GB RAM · up 1d 17h

Health score: 100 / 100

  OK       cpu      CPU 6%, load 1.9 on 10 cores.
  OK       memory   Memory pressure normal, 66% used, swap 0 B.
  OK       disk     698.7 GB free (75%).
  OK       battery  52% charged, capacity 100%, 71 cycles, 30.6°C.
  OK       thermal  No thermal throttling.

What it checks

Each finding comes with plain-English advice, and everything rolls up into a 0–100 health score.

Install

brew install anirudhjayaraman/tap/macverdict
macverdict setup

That's it. macverdict setup starts background recording, builds the small alert app and sends a test alert (click Allow if macOS asks). Then run macverdict any time.

To remove it: macverdict uninstall, then brew uninstall macverdict.

uv tool install git+https://github.com/anirudhjayaraman/macverdict

Needs macOS 12 or later. Clickable alerts need Apple's Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install); without them, everything else still works.

Use

macverdict                      # diagnose right now
macverdict insights             # blame, RAM verdict, battery forecast, throttling
macverdict report               # HTML report with insights and trends, opens in your browser
macverdict history --days 30    # min/avg/max summary in the terminal
macverdict export history.csv   # take your data to a spreadsheet or notebook
macverdict check --json         # machine-readable snapshot
macverdict setup --every 5      # record every 5 minutes instead of 15
macverdict notify-test          # check that alerts reach you
macverdict uninstall            # stop background recording and remove the alert app

The background agent shows up as macverdict in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions (or as python3 if the alert app couldn't be built). macOS labels it "unidentified developer" because it's signed on your own Mac rather than with a paid Apple Developer ID, which is normal for open-source command-line tools. Switching it off there stops recording.

The background agent runs at low priority, survives reboots, and shows a macOS notification only when something is critical (e.g. memory pressure critical, battery overheating, disk nearly full).

Notifications

The background agent only alerts you when something is critical, and clicking an alert opens your macverdict report. macverdict setup builds the small alert app that makes this work.

It's built from source on your machine (src/macverdict/notifier/MacverdictNotifier.swift, about 100 lines) and signed locally, so there's no downloaded binary and no Apple account involved. It has no Dock icon and only runs for a few seconds when posting an alert or handling a click.

Without it, macverdict falls back to macOS's built-in osascript. Those alerts show as coming from Script Editor, and clicking one opens Script Editor. If no banner appears at all, check System Settings → Notifications (macverdict or Script Editor) and that no Focus mode is on.

Use it from Python

from macverdict import collect, evaluate, health_score, insights, storage

snap = collect()
findings = evaluate(snap)
print(health_score(findings), [f.message for f in findings if f.level != "ok"])

rows = storage.load(storage.connect(), days=30, full=True)
for i in insights.build(rows, snap["system"]["memory_total"], insights.hardware_model()):
    print(i.title, "→", i.headline)

Where data lives

~/Library/Application Support/macverdict/ holds history.db (SQLite), report.html and the agent logs. Samples older than 90 days are pruned automatically. Set MACVERDICT_HOME to use another folder.

How it works

• psutil for CPU, memory, swap, disk, network and processes
• sysctl kern.memorystatus_vm_pressure_level for macOS memory pressure
• ioreg -rn AppleSmartBattery for battery capacity, cycles and temperature
• NSProcessInfo.thermalState (read via ctypes, no PyObjC) and pmset -g therm for throttling
• a per-user launchd agent for scheduling
• a tiny Swift app (built locally) for clickable notifications, with osascript as a fallback

Development

uv venv && uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/pytest

License

MIT