htop Essentials

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:35:08 +0800

Basic Usage

Start the program with htop. When running inside a desktop terminal emulator, htop supports mouse interaction — you can scroll, click to sort columns, and use the bottom menu.

Kill a Process

Use the arrow keys to move through the process list. By default, Vim motion keys are not working.

To kill a process, press F9 or k and then choose the signal to send.

Like the kill command in shell:

15 SIGTERM - recommended to try first
9 SIGKILL - forcibly terminates the process

SIGKILL may leave behind artifacts such as stale terminal output because the process is terminated without cleanup. Example: terminate htop process with SIGKILL, and there will be leftover contents in terminal window.

Find the Desired Process

Press u to show the list of users, and then narrow down the process list by selecting one.

Press F3 or / to search the process by name. The search is incremental and highlights matches.

Shortcuts

Some commonly used shortcus:

PgUp, PgDn, Home & End - move the cursor as expected
\ - filter the process list by keyword
t - toggle tree view
/ - search by process name
Shift + p - sort by CPU usage
Shift + m - sort by memory usage
H - toggle userland threads
- threads appear under their parent process
- MEM% is a process-level meter, so all threads under the same process show the same value
q - quit htop

UI Setup

Press F2 to open Setup, where you can customize what htop displays. Some useful options include: