# Sloth

A native GUI for lsof that shows every open file, socket, and pipe on your Mac by process.

HTML: https://softbests.com/software/sloth
Markdown: https://softbests.com/software/sloth.md
Website: https://sveinbjorn.org/sloth

- Category: [Developer utilities](https://softbests.com/category/developer-tools)
- Pricing: Open source
- Platforms: macOS
- Underrated

## Best for

Developers and admins debugging which process holds a file, port, or mount.

## Why it deserves attention

Sloth lists every open file, directory, IP socket, Unix domain socket, device, and pipe, then lets you filter by name, access mode, volume, type, location, or regular expression and sort by process, user, bundle identifier, and more. It shows socket status, protocol, and version, highlights connections between processes, and offers an inspection window plus contextual file operations and in-app root authentication. It is a native Objective-C/Cocoa app under BSD-3-Clause with about 9,000 GitHub stars and stays fast on large process tables. It is a diagnostic tool rather than a monitor, the UI is information-dense, and reading root-owned sockets requires the authentication prompt.

## Can replace

- lsof

## Related and alternatives

- [Wireshark](https://softbests.com/software/wireshark)
- [btop](https://softbests.com/software/btop)