Spare vs Activity Monitor
Understand what’s using your Mac.
Activity Monitor gives you a detailed view of your Mac’s processes. Spare brings recognized apps, projects, and AI agents together so you can decide what to keep running.
Free. No subscription. No account. Apple silicon · macOS 14+.
Which one fits?
Use Activity Monitor for detailed process inspection and system diagnostics. Consider Spare if your first question is which app or project a busy process belongs to.
A familiar workday
Your afternoon has a lot going on.
Chrome has dozens of tabs open. Slack and Notion are running. Two local projects and an agent are working in the background. A process name alone may not tell you which work you would interrupt by closing it.
In Spare, start with Apps, Projects, or Agents. Open a recognized group, review its sessions, and check what a stop request affects. Ownership is inferred; unidentified work can still appear as a generic task.
See Spare’s illustrated workflow →Spare and Activity Monitor, side by side.
Different scopes. Choose the one that answers your questions.
| What matters | Activity Monitor | Spare |
|---|---|---|
| Organizing work | Process inspection and system views | Recognized apps, projects, and agent sessions |
| CPU and memory | CPU activity and memory usage views | CPU readings, memory pressure, and group estimates |
| Closing work | Quit and force-quit controls | Reviewed normal quit or development-process stop requests |
| Deeper diagnostics | Energy, disk, network, GPU, and diagnostic tools | Focused on CPU and memory; shortcut to Activity Monitor |
Competitor information: Apple’s Activity Monitor guide. Reviewed October 4, 2026. This is a documentation-based comparison, not a performance test.
Keep Activity Monitor for deeper investigation
It is the better fit when you need system diagnostics, energy use, disk or network activity, or to force quit an unresponsive process. Spare does not replace those capabilities.
Consider Spare for everyday decisions.
See recognized apps and their helpers together. Find development work by project or port. Review what a stop request affects. Look back at your day or week in a dedicated Recap window.
Spare never closes work automatically. A stop request can still interrupt a server or agent, so review the session before proceeding.
Before you choose
A few practical details.
Does Spare replace Activity Monitor?
It can be your everyday starting point, while Activity Monitor stays useful for deeper inspection. Spare includes a shortcut to open it.
Can Spare identify individual browser tabs?
No. It groups browsers with their helpers but does not identify individual tabs or read their contents. It also does not inspect Docker containers or measure per-app power use.
Can I download Spare today?
Yes. Download the signed, Apple-notarized release for Apple-silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later. The source is available on GitHub under the MIT license.
What does Spare keep from my day?
Up to 30 days of hourly summaries stay on your Mac, including app and project names. You can pause recording, clear history, or export a selected period as CSV. Sleep and missed readings are shown as unobserved time. Resource use does not measure productivity.
Explore another comparison.
Get Spare
Free to use. Yours to explore.
Download Spare for Apple silicon, or explore the MIT-licensed source on GitHub. Free to use, with no subscription or account.
macOS 14+ · Apple silicon · Signed and notarized