iStat nano 2 Available

Posted by Nick Cotton on 04/10/07 in Applications, Utilities

Fresh from the iSlayer development team, a new version of this exceptionally popular system monitoring widget is here! The new version sports a great redesign of the interface and is packed with new features.

iStat nano windows The new interface is delightfully animated with crossfades and while it feels a bit unnatural at first, once you have adjusted it really is a pleasure to use. The back of the widget is a lot bigger than the front so don’t position iStat nano too close to the bottom of your screen or it will hang off when you flip it over. Some other negative differences I noticed between this version and its predecessor are:

The removal of colour-coding in the memory and CPU sections.
The omission of iStat nano from the processes section (although they promise that its more efficient than ever).

The interface isn’t the only thing that has changed in this version. iSlayer have been busy and the new version contains, among other things: support for all 8 cores in the new Mac Pros, better support for Leopard and a whole load of other enhancements and rearrangements that make iStat nano smarter and easier to use.

iStat nano interface outline

One of the biggest new additions to iStat nano is a collection of keyboard shortcuts, which (as they say) apply to “almost everything”. A list of the shortcuts can be found in the iStat nano manual. Anyone feel like making an “iStat nano cheat sheet widget”?

The widget runs quickly and smoothly, I couldn’t notice any slowdowns or jumpy transitions. iStat nano 2.0 is a very worthy upgrade and has reminded me of how useful the widget can be. The one request I have is that they remove the memory section as it is reminding me that I need more RAM.

The update is available here, still for free and still the best of its kind.

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5 Comment(s)

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Miles Evans said on

April 10th, 2007 at 9:34 am

iStat 2 is one of my must have widgets. I imagine the memory footprint must be somewhat large (it’s about 1mb I think), but I don’t care much as I find myself constantly using it to gauge performance when running intense tasks.

5/5 stars from me.

Marc Edwards said on

April 10th, 2007 at 10:35 am

Thanks for the review

We’re doing a sneaky 2.01 update that’ll add another option to enable colour coding for the CPU and mem bars as it seems a few people have missed it.

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Will said on

April 10th, 2007 at 6:34 pm

I just downloaded it, and it’s awesome! I plan on having it open all the time. I love the crossfade interface, really slick.

Nick Cotton said on

April 10th, 2007 at 9:07 pm

iSlayer have just releases a “silent” upgrade, bringing back the option to use colour coded bars. They’ve also done some work on trying to make the back of the widget a bit smaller.

Thanks to them.

Julian said on

April 10th, 2007 at 9:52 pm

it looks nice i use iStatPro but maybe ill try this for a little while.