CPU Info is a free, open-source Mac application that surfaces a detailed, real-time snapshot of your machine's hardware and system software — everything from CPU architecture and core count to memory configuration, storage, battery health, and running OS details — all in a single clean window.
What is CPU Info?
CPU Info is a lightweight system-information tool for macOS (and other platforms) that displays an organised, readable breakdown of everything inside your computer. Where Apple's own System Information buries specs in nested menus and Activity Monitor focuses on live process data, CPU Info puts the hardware dossier front and centre the moment you open it.
The project is fully open-source on GitHub under the handle kamgurgul, which means no telemetry, no paywalled tiers, and no mystery — you can read every line of code that touches your machine's data before you trust it.
What does CPU Info do best?
CPU Info excels at instant, no-friction hardware reconnaissance — the kind of snapshot you need before filing a bug report, benchmarking a build machine, or just settling a bet about whether your colleague's M3 Pro has more performance cores than yours.
- CPU panel: chip name, architecture (Apple Silicon vs Intel), physical and logical core breakdown, and current clock details without having to open Terminal.
- Memory panel: total RAM, type, and in-use figures laid out more readably than Activity Monitor's memory pressure graph.
- Storage panel: per-volume capacity, used space, and filesystem type — handy when you are juggling multiple SSDs or external drives.
- Battery panel: cycle count, health percentage, and charge state. I check this on every second-hand Mac I evaluate, and it has saved me from a bad purchase more than once.
- Software panel: macOS version, kernel build, locale, and uptime — the details that support tickets always ask for first.
The interface is clean and tab-driven. Every category lives behind its own clearly labelled section, so you are never hunting through an undifferentiated wall of specs the way you sometimes are in System Profiler.
Is CPU Info free?
Yes — CPU Info is completely free to download and use. There is no Pro tier, no in-app purchase, and no subscription. Because it is open-source (MIT licence, available on GitHub), you can audit, fork, and redistribute it freely. The only thing it will ever cost you is the few seconds it takes to install.
Who should use CPU Info?
Developer-types and power users are the obvious audience. If you regularly SSH into build machines, review CI runner specs, or support colleagues across a fleet of Macs with varying configurations, CPU Info is the fastest way to pull a reliable hardware summary without memorising sysctl flags or navigating Apple's verbose System Report XML.
It is also genuinely useful for anyone buying or selling a used Mac. A thirty-second CPU Info check gives you battery cycle count, real RAM capacity, and the exact macOS build — information that is technically available through Apple's menus but noticeably harder to access quickly.
Casual users who just want to know their machine's specs will find it approachable too; the tabs are labelled in plain English, not kernel jargon.
How does CPU Info compare to alternatives?
The closest free alternatives are Apple's built-in System Information and the command line. System Information is comprehensive but slow to navigate and buries key facts in a tree view designed for Apple technicians, not daily users. The Terminal approach (system_profiler, sysctl -a) is powerful but requires you to know exactly what you are asking for.
On the commercial side, iStatistica and iStat Menus are the category heavyweights — they offer live menu-bar graphs, temperature sensors, fan speeds, and network monitoring that CPU Info does not attempt. If you want a persistent, real-time dashboard living in your menu bar, those are the tools. CPU Info is not that. It is a quick-lookup reference panel, not a monitoring suite.
coconutBattery beats CPU Info specifically on battery analytics — it tracks cycle count history over time and supports iOS device diagnostics. For pure battery obsessives, coconutBattery is the better pick. But for a broad hardware overview in one app, CPU Info covers more ground at once.
What are the limitations of CPU Info?
CPU Info is a read-only snapshot tool. It does not offer live graphs, historical data, or menu-bar integration. You will not see per-core CPU load, GPU temperature, or fan RPM. It also does not surface network adapter details or Thunderbolt topology the way System Information does. For anything beyond a static hardware dossier, you will want to reach for a complementary tool alongside it.
