witr
CLI diagnostic tool for tracing processes and their causal ancestry, explaining origins, supervising service, context like directories and containers, risk signals, with support for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, platform-specific inspection, JSON output, and open licensing.
Features
- Command line interface
- Hardware Monitoring
- Process Monitoring
Tags
- process-list
- cli-tool
witr News & Activities
Recent activities
Maoholguin added witr as alternative to htop, Process Explorer, System Informer and Task Manager- Maoholguin added witr
witr information
Developed by
pranshuparmarLicensing
Open Source (Apache-2.0) and Free product.Written in
Alternatives
24 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Categories
OS & Utilities, System & HardwareGitHub repository
- 11,541 Stars
- 260 Forks
- 7 Open Issues
- Updated
What is witr?
witr is a command line diagnostic tool that explains why a process is running, not only that it exists. It can start from a process or service name, a PID, or a listening port, then resolves that target to the relevant process and builds a causal ancestry chain that shows how the process started and what is keeping it alive.
Its output is organized into sections such as target, process details, “why it exists” ancestry, the primary source responsible for starting or supervising the process (for example systemd, launchd, Windows Services, Docker, pm2, cron, or an interactive shell), plus best effort context like working directory, Git repository and branch, container name and image, and bind scope. It also supports optional warnings for common risk and health signals, and includes flags for JSON output, tree or short ancestry views, environment variable display, and color control.
witr supports Linux, macOS, Windows, and FreeBSD, using platform specific tooling to inspect processes and networking. The project is open source and released under the Apache 2.0 license.