MarkDash vs Activity Monitor
The short answer
Pick Activity Monitor to find what’s eating CPU, memory or battery, for any app on your Mac. It’s built in.
Pick MarkDash to find which server holds port 3000. Activity Monitor has no port column; MarkDash starts from the ports.
At a glance
| Feature | MarkDash | Activity Monitor |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Native menu bar app, macOS 15 or later | Process viewer built into macOS |
| Price | $9.99 per Mac at launch, then $19.99, paid once. 14-day trial | Free |
| Lists listening ports | Yes Every listening TCP port with process, PID, folder and command. Rescans every 4 s | Partly No port column. Inspect one process, then Open Files and Ports |
| Knows the project | Yes Your saved sites by name; any other server by its folder | No Process name and PID only |
| Starts your projects | Yes One click, with your login shell’s PATH. Detects the command from the folder | No |
| Stops a server | Yes Quit signal to the whole process tree, force kill after 3 s | Yes Quit or Force Quit |
| Restarts a server | Yes For the sites you saved | No |
| Live logs | Yes For the servers MarkDash starts | No |
| Port conflict warnings | Yes Port taken, two copies of one project, a server that moved (5173 → 5174). One-click kill | No |
| Saved pages that follow the port | Yes Save /admin, /blog… per project. Paste a localhost URL and it’s filed under the right one | No |
| Links, notes and a board | Yes Categories, notes, search, To do / Doing / Done board | No |
| Menu bar | Yes | No A window, with an optional Dock icon graph |
| Scripting | Partly Shortcuts and Spotlight: open, start and stop sites, open links. No CLI | No |
| Also does | No No tunnels or share links | Yes CPU, memory, energy, disk and network for every process |
Where MarkDash pulls ahead
- It lists ports. Activity Monitor has no port column, so finding who listens on 5173 means inspecting processes one at a time.
- It names the project, so ten node processes aren’t ten identical rows.
- It warns about port conflicts and moved ports, with a kill button on the warning.
- It starts, restarts and opens your projects from the menu bar.
Where Activity Monitor is the better pick
- It shows CPU, memory, energy and disk for every process, not only servers.
- It’s built in and covers every app, not just dev servers.
- It can sample a process or show its open files when something is stuck.
Using both
Use Activity Monitor when your Mac is slow and you want to know why. Use MarkDash when a port is taken and you want to know by which project.
What they cost
Activity Monitor comes with macOS.
MarkDash is a one-time purchase per Mac, from $9.99, after a 14-day free trial with every feature. See the licenses.
Questions
Can Activity Monitor show ports?
Not as a list. Its Network tab shows how much each process sends and receives, without ports. You can double-click one process and open Open Files and Ports to see its sockets. To list every listening port at once, run lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P in Terminal.
Why do I see so many node processes?
Every dev server, watcher and tool built on Node runs as a node process. MarkDash shows the folder each one runs from, so you can tell your projects apart.
Try MarkDash on your own projects
Free for 14 days, then $9.99 per Mac, paid once. macOS 15 or later.
More comparisons
- MarkDash vs lsof and killThe built-in commands for finding who holds a port.
- MarkDash vs PortlivoThe closest app to MarkDash, with sharing and a CLI.
- MarkDash vs LocalhostBarA small, free, open source list of localhost ports.
- MarkDash vs PortKillerFree, open source port killer for Mac and Windows.
- MarkDash vs RaycastDev Servers and Port Manager extensions for the launcher.
- MarkDash vs Laravel HerdA full PHP and Laravel environment.
- MarkDash vs kill-port and fkillThe npm commands that free a busy port.
Sources for Activity Monitor: Apple: view network activity