muxtop

A modern, multiplexed system monitor for the terminal.

muxtop replaces the htop + iftop + ctop workflow with a single tabbed interface. Think htop, but with multiplexer-style UX (à la tmux/zellij) and a VS Code-style command palette.

Installation

Via crates.io

cargo install muxtop

Via Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew tap lanexadev/tap
brew install muxtop

Via APT (Debian / Ubuntu)

# Add the repo (one time)
curl -fsSL https://lanexadev.github.io/apt/gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/lanexadev.gpg
echo "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/lanexadev.gpg] https://lanexadev.github.io/apt stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lanexadev.list

# Install
sudo apt update
sudo apt install muxtop

Pre-built binary (Linux / macOS)

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lanexadev/muxtop/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

From source

git clone https://github.com/lanexadev/muxtop.git
cd muxtop
cargo build --release
# Binary available at target/release/muxtop

MSRV: Rust 1.88

Features

Privileges

Access to the Docker socket (/var/run/docker.sock) is equivalent to root access on the host machine: any user in the docker group can launch a privileged container and break out. To run muxtop with a minimal privilege budget, use rootless Podman — the user-scoped socket ($XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/podman/podman.sock) is isolated per user and muxtop detects it automatically. Avoid running muxtop-server as root on an exposed host: prefer a service account with only the rootless Podman socket mounted read/write.

Usage

muxtop                              # normal launch (auto-detects Docker/Podman)
muxtop --refresh 2                  # refresh every 2 seconds
muxtop --filter firefox             # start with a process filter
muxtop --sort mem                   # sort by memory at startup
muxtop --tree                       # start in tree view
muxtop --about                      # version, license, privacy pledge

# Containers tab — by default muxtop checks $DOCKER_HOST, /var/run/docker.sock,
# then the Podman sockets. Pass a path to force, or disable entirely:
muxtop --docker-socket /var/run/docker.sock   # socket override
muxtop --no-containers                        # disable container collection

# Run the server (TLS + auth required)
muxtop-server --token "my-secret-16chars" --tls-generate
muxtop-server --token "my-secret-16chars" --tls-cert cert.pem --tls-key key.pem
muxtop-server --token "my-secret-16chars" --tls-generate --bind 0.0.0.0:4242 --max-clients 10

# Remote monitoring (TLS)
muxtop --remote host:port --token "my-secret-16chars" --tls-skip-verify  # dev
muxtop --remote host:port --token "my-secret-16chars" --tls-ca cert.pem  # production
MUXTOP_TOKEN="my-secret-16chars" muxtop --remote host:port --tls-ca cert.pem

Keyboard shortcuts

Benchmarks

Tested on macOS with 500+ processes (Thomas benchmark):

Run the benchmark yourself:

just bench-thomas
# or
./scripts/bench-thomas.sh

Architecture

muxtop/
├── src/                         # Entry point (clap CLI + tokio bootstrap)
└── crates/
    ├── muxtop-core/             # System collection, data models, actions
    │   ├── src/collector.rs     # Async sysinfo loop (1 Hz) + container loop (0.5 Hz)
    │   ├── src/process.rs       # Sort, filter, process tree
    │   ├── src/system.rs        # CPU / memory / load snapshots
    │   ├── src/network.rs       # Network interfaces + history
    │   ├── src/containers.rs    # Container model (ContainerSnapshot, states, engine)
    │   ├── src/container_engine.rs # Async trait + Docker/Podman socket detection
    │   └── src/docker_engine.rs # Concrete bollard-backed implementation
    ├── muxtop-tui/              # ratatui interface
    │   ├── src/app.rs           # State machine, event handling
    │   └── src/ui/              # Tabs General, Processes, Network, Containers, palette, theme
    ├── muxtop-proto/            # Wire protocol and binary serialization
    └── muxtop-server/           # TCP daemon for remote monitoring

Development

just check    # fmt + clippy + tests
just bench    # criterion micro-benchmarks
just dev      # continuous check with bacon

Roadmap

Privacy & telemetry

muxtop collects NO telemetry, NO statistics and contacts NO ONE. Ever.

It makes no network calls. It is designed for air-gapped production servers. If you observe outbound network activity from muxtop, that is a bug — please report it.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for prerequisites, code conventions, the branch workflow and PR submission instructions.

License

Available under either of the following licenses, at your option:

• Apache License, Version 2.0 (LICENSE-APACHE)
• MIT License (LICENSE-MIT)