Yamon 🦆

Beautiful, In-Depth System Monitoring for macOS.

Yamon (Duck Monitor) is a modern system monitor engineered specifically for Apple Silicon. It goes beyond standard CPU and RAM metrics to show component power estimates and temperatures in a real-time web interface.

✨ Features

🚀 Deep Apple Silicon Integration

Unlock metrics that standard tools often hide:

• Total System Power: SMC power reading in watts when the sensor is available.
• Power Breakdown: Estimated CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine power in watts.
• Neural Engine (ANE): Estimated power is shown in the Power chart when available. ANE utilization is not reported because the available samplers do not provide a verified measurement.
• GPU Frequency & Usage: GPU frequency and hardware active-time percentage when available.
• CPU & GPU Temperature: Average of available SMC temperature sensors in °C, with a live two-minute chart.

⚡️ Real-Time & Responsive

• Live Sampling: WebSockets send each new sample as it arrives, normally about once per second.
• Historical Context: Interactive charts visualize the last 2 minutes of performance data.
• Modern UI: Built with React, TypeScript, and ECharts for a premium, responsive aesthetic on any device.

🛠️ Native Performance, Pure Python

• Native APIs via ctypes: Directly interfaces with macOS IOReport and SMC private frameworks.
• No Heavy Dependencies: Pure Python implementation without the need for compiling Rust or C/C++ binaries.
• No Sudo Required: IOReport provides component power without root; powermetrics adds GPU active time and CPU/GPU frequencies when Yamon runs as root.*

📦 Installation

Install from PyPI (Recommended)

Run the latest published Yamon without installing it permanently:

uvx yamon

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000 while it runs; press Ctrl-C to stop. uvx downloads the PyPI package on the first run and reuses its cache later.

To install the command permanently instead:

pip install yamon

After installation, start the monitor:

yamon

Visit http://localhost:8000 to view your dashboard.

📦 Available on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/yamon/ PyPI releases may lag this repository; install from source to test unreleased changes.

Install from Source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/grapeot/yamon.git
cd yamon

# Install in development mode
pip install -e .

📸 Usage

Using the Installed Package (Recommended)

After installing from PyPI or source, simply run:

yamon

Or with custom options:

yamon --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000 --reload

Yamon listens on 127.0.0.1 by default. Use --host only when you intend to make the unauthenticated dashboard reachable from another device.

Inspecting a One-Shot Sample on macOS

powermetrics needs administrator privileges. This command takes one sample, writes a local JSON file, and exits; it does not start Yamon:

sudo /usr/bin/powermetrics -i 1000 -n 1 -s cpu_power,gpu_power,ane_power -f plist \
  | /usr/bin/python3 -c 'import sys,plistlib,json; raw=sys.stdin.buffer.read().strip(b"\0"); print(json.dumps(plistlib.loads(raw),default=str))' \
  > powermetrics.json

The processor.cpu_power, processor.gpu_power, and processor.ane_power values in this plist are milliwatts; Yamon converts them to watts. The gpu.idle_ratio field measures idle time, so Yamon displays (1 - idle_ratio) × 100 as GPU active time. Apple's estimated power figures are useful for changes on one machine, not calibrated wall-outlet power.

To allow only that exact powermetrics command without a password on a Mac, open a sudoers file with the validating editor:

sudo env EDITOR=/usr/bin/nano /usr/sbin/visudo -f /etc/sudoers.d/yamon-powermetrics

Paste the following inside the editor, not at the shell prompt:

YOUR_USERNAME ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/powermetrics -i 1000 -n 1 -s cpu_power\,gpu_power\,ane_power -f plist

Replace YOUR_USERNAME with the output of id -un. In nano, press Ctrl-O, Return, then Ctrl-X. Check the rule with a noninteractive one-shot call:

sudo -n /usr/bin/powermetrics -i 1000 -n 1 -s cpu_power,gpu_power,ane_power -f plist > /dev/null

The backslashes before commas belong only in the sudoers rule, not in the terminal command. This rule grants access to this one powermetrics command; it does not make Yamon itself run as root. To use Yamon's root-only metrics, start Yamon from an explicitly privileged launch (for example, sudo uv tool run yamon when installed with uv).

Viewing Temperatures

The Temperature chart shows separate CPU and GPU sensor averages and their recent history. Missing or invalid sensor readings appear as unavailable, not as 0°C. These sensors can be read without sudo on supported Macs. For an independent one-shot check on a Mac with macmon installed:

macmon pipe -s 1 -i 1000 | jq '.temp'

These are separate CPU and GPU temperature readings in °C, not one overall "system temperature." powermetrics -s thermal reports thermal pressure, not a temperature in °C.

Development Mode (From Source)

If you're developing from source:

# 1. Install in development mode
pip install -e .

# 2. Build Frontend (for production mode)
./build_frontend.sh

# 3. Run Backend
./run_backend.sh

Or run the installed command:

yamon --reload

Development Mode (Separate Frontend & Backend)

For contributors who want to modify the frontend code.

# 1. Install in development mode
pip install -e .

# 2. Run Backend (Collects data)
./run_backend.sh

# 3. Run Frontend (Hot-reload dev server)
./run_frontend.sh

Visit http://localhost:5173 for the development server.

🏗️ Architecture

Yamon bridges the gap between low-level hardware counters and high-level visualization:

1. Collectors (Python): Low-overhead bindings to Apple's private frameworks (IOKit, IOReport).
2. Server (FastAPI): Aggregates metrics and broadcasts them via efficient WebSocket streams.
3. Frontend (React): High-performance canvas rendering for dense data visualization.

📈 Rolling Averages

Yamon records per-minute aggregates of CPU usage, memory used, system power, and temperature to a single JSONL file. The footer shows observed-time averages for the past 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, and 14 days. Each temperature sample is the arithmetic mean of the CPU and GPU sensor averages; if either sensor is unavailable, that sample does not enter the temperature average.

• Data file: ~/Library/Application Support/yamon/summary.jsonl (override the directory with the YAMON_DATA_DIR environment variable)
• Auto-rotate: rows older than 21 days are dropped on startup and hourly; a hard 20 MB cap drops the oldest rows if the file ever exceeds it
• Disk cost: one small append per minute (~150 KB/day)
• Averages only cover time while Yamon is running and the machine is awake
• Existing rows from before temperature recording still contribute CPU, memory, and power averages. Temperature history starts when this version runs.
• The 1-hour column appears after one recorded hour. Longer windows appear after one recorded day and mark shorter coverage as partial.

🔋 Power Monitoring Accuracy

Yamon reads the SMC PSTR key for system power when available. Component power is estimated from powermetrics or IOReport over a one-second window. These sources cover different parts of the machine, so system power is not expected to equal the sum of CPU, GPU, and ANE power.

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Note: While Yamon is designed to run without root, some deeply protected system metrics may unavailable without elevated privileges. The application will degrade gracefully in these cases.