winproc-tui: Best Windows Process Monitor for Developers in 2026

What Is winproc-tui?

winproc-tui is a Windows process investigation tool built by TX230 for developers, and it is one of the best Windows Process Monitoring TUI tools for Windows 11 developers. It launches from the terminal and shows live process metrics, history, and playback across up to four graphs, with retained tracked-process history for about 7,200 seconds and general process history for about 120 seconds.

The point of winproc-tui is not broad coverage; it is fast answers about what a process is using, when it used it, and how much the value changed. That makes it useful when you need to verify a suspected leak, compare behavior before and after a refactor, or inspect open files without leaving the terminal.

Quick Overview

Who Should Use winproc-tui?

• Windows application developers who need to catch memory growth, handle churn, or file-handle leaks while the app is running.
• Performance engineers comparing two runtime states, especially when they need an exact delta between point A and point B instead of a rough estimate.
• Platform and ops engineers watching background services over long periods and then replaying the window around an incident.
• Debugging-focused engineers who want a terminal UI instead of a heavy GUI process manager.

Not ideal for:

• Teams that need cross-platform support on Linux or macOS, because winproc-tui is Windows 11 x64 only.
• Users who want a general-purpose process manager with the widest possible kernel, service, and security coverage.
• Analysts who need ETW-style event tracing or system-wide observability rather than per-process resource inspection.

Key Features of winproc-tui

• Live resource table — winproc-tui shows RAM, VRAM, and other per-process metrics in a sortable table. Column selection, filtering, and jump search make it practical when the process list is noisy and you need to isolate a single target quickly.
• Multi-slot graphing — it can place selected metrics into up to four Graph/Samples slots at once. That is useful when you want to correlate memory growth with I/O spikes or compare two resource curves side by side.
• Long retention windows — the tool keeps about 120 seconds of general process history and about 7,200 seconds of tracked-process plus RAM/VRAM history. That retention window is large enough to catch slow leaks without external logging.
• Tracked list behavior — you can register process names of interest and keep their last known values visible even after exit. This is useful for ephemeral worker processes that disappear before you can inspect them manually.
• JSON Lines recording and playback — winproc-tui records tracked processes and RAM/VRAM into JSONL logs, then replays them in the same Processes, Graph, Samples, and A/B layout. That makes the output easy to parse with jq, archive in CI artifacts, or attach to a bug report.
• A/B comparison mode — you can mark any two points as A and B and get the delta plus elapsed time between them. That is the fastest way to quantify the effect of a hot path, a benchmark step, or a suspicious UI action.
• Open files view — the selected live process can expose the files it currently has open. That is a direct check for missed closes, stale locks, and file access patterns that are hard to infer from logs alone.

winproc-tui vs Alternatives

Pick System Informer when you need a richer GUI and more system-level detail than a terminal UI can practically show. Pick Process Explorer when you want a quick, familiar tree view for one-off checks and do not need playback or A/B deltas.

Pick OpenTrace when your real question is event sequencing rather than current resource state. If you want to pair resource snapshots with timeline tracing, OpenTrace is a strong companion; if you want to browse adjacent terminal-first tooling, browse all CLI Tools.

How winproc-tui Works

winproc-tui is built around a row-oriented process table plus a timeline layer for graphing and playback. The main model is simple: selected processes are tracked, sampled over time, and projected into table cells, graph slots, sample points, and an A/B delta view.

The design choice that matters most is the separation between live inspection and replayable data. Instead of forcing you to watch a process in real time, winproc-tui can persist the relevant metrics as JSON Lines and replay the same layout later, which is much easier to analyze after a crash, incident, or regression test.

The tool is also opinionated about scope. It does not try to replace a full system monitor; it focuses on the questions developers ask most often on Windows: current resource use, change over time, open files, and whether a specific code path caused a measurable delta.

# get started from a release binary
Invoke-WebRequest https://github.com/TX230/winproc-tui/releases/latest/download/winproc-tui.zip -OutFile winproc-tui.zip
Expand-Archive .\winproc-tui.zip -DestinationPath .\winproc-tui
.\winproc-tui\winproc-tui.exe

That flow downloads the prebuilt binary, unpacks it, and starts the TUI without requiring a Rust toolchain. Once the app opens, use ? for help, Ctrl+R to start recording, and Ctrl+O to open settings if you need to tune the layout or behavior.

Pros and Cons of winproc-tui

Pros:

• Fast terminal startup with no separate runtime or installer when using the release binary.
• Strong time-series workflow for resource diagnosis, including graphing and A/B deltas.
• JSON Lines output is trivial to parse, diff, and archive with standard tooling.
• Tracks process names of interest and preserves last values after exit, which helps with ephemeral workloads.
• Open files inspection adds a practical debugging angle that many lightweight monitors skip.
• Keyboard-first interaction keeps the workflow efficient for repeated debugging sessions.

Cons:

• Windows 11 x64 only, so it is unusable on Linux and macOS.
• The scope is narrow by design, so it does not try to be a full replacement for heavier system internals tools.
• Command-line options are minimal, which means most behavior is discovered inside the TUI.
• The UI is optimized for inspection, not for building custom dashboards or exports.
• If you need deep ETW or kernel tracing, you will still need a separate tracing tool.

Getting Started with winproc-tui

The fastest path is the prebuilt release binary, because it avoids toolchain setup and gets you into the TUI immediately. If you want to build from source, install Rust 1.95.0+ with the MSVC toolchain, then compile with Cargo.

# source build workflow
winget install --id Rustlang.Rustup -e
winget install --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.BuildTools -e --override "--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --includeRecommended --quiet --wait --norestart"
git clone https://github.com/TX230/winproc-tui.git
cd winproc-tui
cargo build --release
cargo run --release

After the first run, the main things to learn are the hotkeys for filtering, sorting, tracking, and graph assignment. If you prefer a PATH-based install, cargo install --path . puts winproc-tui in your Cargo bin directory so you can launch it from anywhere with a single command.

Verdict

winproc-tui is the strongest option for terminal-based Windows process investigation when you need live metrics, historical playback, and exact A/B deltas in one UI. Its biggest strength is focused resource analysis; the main caveat is Windows-only scope. If your workflow is developer debugging on Windows 11, recommend it.