A visual clone of btop for monitoring
an Android device connected over adb — CPU (per core), RAM, battery, network
(download/upload) and processes — with braille area graphs, gradients and boxes
that match btop's Default theme (colors and glyphs taken straight from btop's
source).
It runs nothing on the device and needs no root: it only reads files under
/proc and /sys via adb shell and draws everything in your terminal. Great
for POS terminals and phones where you can't install a native htop/btop.
btop is a C++ program that reads the local machine's /proc — it was never
meant to monitor a remote device. Running real btop inside an old Android (e.g. a smart
POS on Android 7) would require cross-compiling a static ARM binary and driving a
TUI over adb shell — impractical. andtop instead reproduces btop's look
while reading the data over adb. The colors and braille glyphs come directly from
btop's source (the Default theme), so the appearance stays faithful.
adb(Android Platform Tools) and the device with USB debugging enabled- Python 3.10+
- Libraries:
rich
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt.venv/bin/python andtop.py # default interval 1.5s
.venv/bin/python andtop.py -d 1 # refresh every 1s
.venv/bin/python andtop.py -s SERIAL # pick a device (see: adb devices)Press Ctrl+C to quit.
The adb path defaults to
/opt/platform-tools/adb. Adjust theADBconstant at the top ofandtop.pyif yours lives elsewhere.
- Header — device model, Android version, battery level/voltage, refresh interval and a live clock.
- CPU — a large braille history graph, a per-core meter grid, load average and the detected SoC + average frequency.
- MEM — Total / Used / Available / Cached / Free as a meter list, plus
/datadisk usage. - NET — download and upload history graphs with current speed (incl. Kibps) and cumulative totals.
- PROC — top processes by CPU, with the CPU column colored by load.
- Appearance based on btop++ by Jakob P. Liljenberg (aristocratos), licensed under Apache-2.0.
Released under the MIT License. The visual style (theme colors and braille glyphs) is derived from btop++, which is licensed under Apache-2.0.