You’ve probably used **top** and **htop** for many years, and while they’ve served us well, it’s 2025—and modern software has moved on to more functional and visually appealing designs. Both top and htop feel outdated and could use a modern refresh, which is exactly what **btop++** brings to the table.
With its colorful interface, graphed data, and intuitive UI, btop++ drags terminal resource management into the modern era. It’s configurable on the fly, provides helpful UI hints, and is just generally pleasing to look at. Simple yet elegant, btop++ has become a mainstay in my personal toolbox.
### A Gorgeous and Functional UI
One of the reasons I appreciate TUIs (text-based user interfaces) is their design and user experience—and btop++ excels in both. Its use of colors and border boxes makes distinguishing information easier, while keyboard hints make learning the interface a breeze. The graphed data lets you determine system performance at a glance, effortlessly.
To put it simply: the UI looks well-polished and is highly functional.
– Annotation 1 shows a graph of CPU performance.
– Annotation 2 highlights keyboard hints that modify which panes are visible.
– Annotation 3 demonstrates how border boxes add polish to the overall design.
### Process Management Made Easy
Beyond its attractive looks, btop++ also provides a quick and convenient way to manage processes. The feature that appeals to me the most is the ability to filter and kill processes.
While killing processes is standard in every process manager, filtering is not—often, only a simple search is provided. Process lists can be noisy, so filtering is a must in my book. Being able to quickly toggle between a process tree and a flat list improves the experience even further.
Overall, what impresses me is how quick and easy it is to pick up btop++. I’ve never needed to read the manual—it’s that intuitive. Its design and quick access to processes are exactly what I want from a resource monitor. While top and htop offer some of these features, they don’t deliver the complete package that btop++ does.
### Vim Controls: Efficiency at Your Fingertips
Whether I stop using Neovim in the future or not, I will always rely on Vim keymaps. They are the primary selling point of Vim and any application I use.
Over the years, I’ve collected many applications that support Vim keymaps in some form, and btop++ is one of them. It’s the little touches in how btop++ implements Vim keymaps that I love.
For example, pressing the **J** key immediately moves down the list of processes, regardless of how many panes are open. Since managing processes is usually my goal, the developers could have assigned that key to move focus between UI elements—but they didn’t.
Pressing the **H** and **L** keys (left and right) switches between different process views, effectively sorting processes by memory usage, PID, CPU usage, and more. These simple yet ergonomic features get me straight to what matters: viewing and managing processes quickly and easily.
Combined with the keymaps for configuring resource panes, btop++ positions itself as an application focused on convenience and accessibility—a huge win in my opinion.
### Configurable Resource Panes on the Fly
Another convenient feature of btop++ is the ability to toggle resource panes on and off with a single keypress.
This comes in handy when you want to focus on a specific part of your system while working, such as compiling software or running an Electron app. For instance:
– Pressing the **D** key toggles the disk monitor pane.
– Pressing the **3** key toggles the network monitor pane.
While top and htop also offer configurable views on the fly, they feel underwhelming compared to btop++’s flexibility. With btop++, you can completely change the layout and hide sections entirely within seconds.
Even better, these resource views are configurable—you can specify different layout presets and cycle through them by pressing the **P** key repeatedly. This level of customization makes btop++ highly tailored to your personal needs.
Overall, btop++’s ability to quickly adapt with just one or two key presses is exactly how a resource monitor should work. Quickly and conveniently.
### Embracing Innovation
We’ve been using the same utilities on Linux for years because we’re accustomed to them. However, in doing so, we often close ourselves off to newer ways of solving problems.
New software that interrupts the status quo is sometimes met with disapproval from the “graybeards” (or aspiring graybeards), but without progress we simply don’t move forward.
While top and htop have served us well, they look and feel a bit dull. Their interfaces lack an intuitive approach—which is exactly why I recommend btop++.
It’s not perfect, but in my opinion, it’s leagues ahead of the alternatives and a step toward better software.
If you haven’t tried btop++ yet, I highly recommend giving it a shot.
https://www.howtogeek.com/heres-why-btop-became-my-favorite-linux-terminal-resource-monitor/