proktree

Print your processes as a nice tree. Filter by process id, user, and command substring. Uniquely, this plucks complete subtrees, from tip to tail.

Works on macOS and Linux.

macOS, particularly, lacks a native tree display, like Linux's ps f.

Sample output

# proktree -s runsvdir

   PID     USER    %CPU  %MEM    RSS     START     TIME    COMMAND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      1 root        0.1   0.0  160.5M    Jul10   10:45.64  ─┬─ /sbin/launchd
  99856 jeremyw     0.0   0.0    1.7M    00:58    0:00.78   └─┬─ /usr/local/bin/runsvdir
  54288 jeremyw     0.0   0.0    1.4M    12:51    0:00.01     └─┬─ runsv nginx
  54289 jeremyw     0.0   0.0    1.8M    12:51    0:00.02       ├─── svlogd -tt .
  54290 jeremyw     0.0   0.0  138.7M    12:51    0:17.00       └─── nginx: master process

Installation

Via Homebrew

brew install jeremywohl/tap/proktree

Via Go

go install github.com/jeremywohl/proktree@latest

Usage

# Show all processes
proktree

# Show help
proktree -h

# Filter by current user
proktree --me
# or
proktree --mine

# Filter by specific user
proktree -u postgres

# Filter by process ID (show process and its entire tree)
proktree -p 1234

# Filter by command string (case-sensitive)
proktree -s nginx

# Filter by command string (case-insensitive)
proktree -i NGINX

# Combine multiple filters (OR logic)
proktree -p 1234 -u www-data -s apache

# Show full usernames and commands
proktree --long-users --long-commands

# Customize tree indentation (e.g., 4 spaces)
proktree --indent 4

Command-Line Options

Option	Long Form	Description
-p	--pid	Show only parents and descendants of process PID (can be specified multiple times)
-u	--user	Show only parents and descendants of processes of USER (can be specified multiple times)
	--me	Show only parents and descendants of processes of current user
	--mine	Show only parents and descendants of processes of current user (alias for --me)
-s	--string	Show only parents and descendants of process names containing STRING (can be specified multiple times)
-i	--string-insensitive	Show only parents and descendants of process names containing STRING case-insensitively (can be specified multiple times)
	--long-users	Show full usernames, without truncation
	--long-commands	Show full commands, without truncation
	--indent	Set the number of spaces for each indentation level (default: 2)
-v	--version	Show version and exit
-h	--help	Show help message

Column Descriptions

• PID: Process ID
• USER: Process owner (truncated to 10 chars unless --long-users is used)
• %CPU: CPU usage percentage
• %MEM: Memory usage percentage
• RSS: Resident Set Size (memory in MB/GB)
• START: Process start time
  • HH:MM for processes started within 24 hours
  • MonDD for processes started this calendar year
  • YYYY for processes started in previous calendar years
• TIME: Cumulative CPU time
  • -- for zero CPU time
  • HH:MM:SS for under 24 hours
  • XYhrs for 24+ hours (right-justified)
• COMMAND: Process tree visualization and command line

Examples

Find all database processes

proktree -s postgres -s mysql -s mongodb

Show current user's processes

proktree --me

Show a specific service and its supervision tree

proktree -s runsvdir

Find all processes owned by web server users

proktree -u www-data -u nginx -u apache

Debug a specific process and its entire process tree

proktree -p 12345

Find all Node.js processes (case-insensitive)

proktree -i node

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.