Monitor Your Server with htop | Hostvento Knowledge Base

What htop is

htop is a better version of top. It shows the CPU cores, memory, swap, load average and a list of processes, with colors, and lets you scroll and act on processes with the keyboard.

Install it if you do not have it:

sudo apt install htop

On CentOS, Rocky and AlmaLinux use sudo dnf install htop (you may need the EPEL repository first).

Start htop

htop

Press q or F10 to quit.

Common options

Option	Meaning
`-d <delay>`	Refresh time between updates, in tenths of a second
`-u <user>`	Show only the processes of one user
`-p <pid>`	Show only the given process IDs
`-s <column>`	Sort by a column
`-t`	Show processes as a tree
`--no-color`	Plain, black-and-white mode

Examples

Set the update interval. The delay is in tenths of a second, so 10 means 1 second:

htop -d 10

Show the processes of one user

htop -u linuxuser

Watch a certain process

htop -p 8759

Sort by a column

htop -s PID

You can use column names such as PERCENT_CPU or PERCENT_MEM.

Show a process tree

htop -t

Without colors

htop --no-color

Keys inside htop

Key	Action
Arrow keys, `PgUp`, `PgDn`, `Home`, `End`	Move through the list
`Space`	Mark (tag) or unmark a process
`U`	Remove all tags
`F3` or `/`	Search for a process by name
`F4`	Filter the list
`F5` or `t`	Switch the tree view
`F6`	Choose the sort column
`F9`	Send a signal (kill) to the selected process
`F7` / `F8`	Lower or raise the priority (nice value)
`P`, `M`, `T`	Sort by CPU, memory or time
`H`	Show or hide user threads
`F2`	Open the setup screen
`q` or `F10`	Quit

Quick recap

htop shows the load of the server and each process.
Filter with -u and -p, view the tree with -t.
Use F9 carefully to stop a process.