Install and use htop on Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop and Server

This post introduces an interactive tool for visually monitoring the memory and process usages of your Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop or Server in real time.

  • What is Htop?

Htop is an interactive system-monitor process-viewer and process-manager. It is designed as an alternative to the Unix program top. It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage. Unlike top, htop provides a full list of processes running, instead of the top resource-consuming processes. Htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status.

  • Install Htop on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop and Server

(This works on both an Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop and  Server.)

Installing htop package on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) is as easy as running the following command on terminal:

Step 1. First make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running these following apt-get commands in the terminal.

$ sudo apt-get update

Step 2. Installing Htop. Install htop process monitoring tool using apt-get command:

$ sudo apt-get install htop
  • Use Htop to monitor your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop and Server in real-time

Now that htop is installed on your server you’ll want to start the program by running the following in a command prompt:

$ htop

This will open the program and you’ll see something similar to the following:

Leave this terminal open, you can use CTRL + ALT + T  to open another new terminal for your other work. Then htop will help you monitor your memory usage in real-time:)  Enjoy!