At a glance
| Drippy | iStat Menus | |
|---|---|---|
| Live speeds in the menu bar | ✓ | ✓ |
| Top apps by bandwidth | Kept by day, week, month | Live |
| Usage by network | ✓ | — |
| Data cap alerts | Cap, reset day and free hours | — |
| Outage and public IP change alerts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduled speed tests | ✓ | — |
| Block apps and domains | ✓ | — |
| CPU, memory, disks, sensors, battery | — | ✓ |
| Runs on | macOS 11 or later | macOS 13.5 or later |
Choose Drippy if data usage is the question
iStat Menus answers "what's using bandwidth right now?". Drippy also answers "what used my data this month, and on which network?". It keeps totals by day, week and month, per app and per network, so a hotspot and your home Wi-Fi never get mixed into one number.
Tell it your plan's cap, reset day and any free hours and it warns you before you go over. It also runs scheduled speed tests, so you have a record of what your provider actually delivered.
Running both
Plenty of people keep iStat Menus for CPU and temperatures and Drippy for the network. If you do, hide iStat's network item so you don't have two speed readouts in the menu bar.
Questions
Does iStat Menus track monthly data usage?
It shows bandwidth history graphs and top apps, but it has no per-network monthly totals or data cap warnings. That's what Drippy is built around.
Is Drippy a lighter iStat Menus alternative?
For the network part, yes. It doesn't monitor CPU, memory, sensors or battery.