Glances

What is Glances?

Glances was created in 2010 by Jean‑Baptiste R. to provide a lightweight, real‑time view of system resources. It runs on any Linux distro that has Python 3, and is packaged for major distributions like Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu. The tool has been updated regularly; the last stable release was in 2023.

Glances is aimed at sysadmins, developers and power users who need a quick snapshot of system health without opening a full‑featured GUI. It works in a terminal or via a web UI, making it useful for remote servers as well as desktops.

Compared with GlassWire or Process Explorer, Glances offers a more comprehensive, text‑based view. It lacks the deep network traffic graphs of GlassWire and the detailed process tree of Process Explorer, but it gives a broader overview with minimal overhead.

Best for: Monitoring servers or desktops where a lightweight, terminal‑based overview is needed.

Key features of Glances

• Real‑time CPU, memory, disk, network stats
• Process list with filtering and sorting
• Web UI for remote monitoring
• Plugin architecture for custom metrics
• Cross‑platform (Linux, macOS, Windows)
• Python‑based, easy to extend

Tips for Windows users

If you come from GlassWire, you’ll notice Glances shows overall bandwidth rather than per‑application graphs. Process Explorer users will find the process list in Glances sorted by CPU or memory; use the filter keys (e.g., ‘c’ for CPU) to narrow it. There are no file‑format imports; you simply run glances from a terminal. Shortcuts differ: ‘q’ quits, ‘h’ shows help, and ‘p’ toggles process view.