# Vitals, the Activity Monitor alternative for Mac, now lets you drag everything into place

By Atta Ur Rehman Shah (https://attacomsian.com/about). Published Oct 6, 2026. Topics: Product Update.
Canonical URL: https://attacomsian.com/blog/vitals-layout

> Vitals has a new Layout page. It shows your menu bar, the dropdown and the window as they are, and you drag the pieces into the order you want. Why I built it, and how to use it.

**[Vitals](https://vitalsmac.com)** has a new Layout page in Settings. It shows three pictures: your menu bar, the dropdown and the window. You arrange Vitals by dragging the pieces in those pictures.

If you missed the launch, Vitals is an Activity Monitor alternative for Mac. It groups every process under the app it belongs to, so you see about 60 apps instead of 1,000 processes. I wrote about [why I built it](https://attacomsian.com/blog/vitals) when it came out.

## Why I did it

A system monitor is a personal thing. One person wants CPU and memory in the menu bar and nothing else. Another wants network speed first, the battery second, and never looks at disk.

Vitals could already do most of that, but the settings were lists of switches. You flipped one, then opened the dropdown to see what changed. If it was not what you wanted, you went back and tried again.

So I replaced the lists with the thing itself. The Layout page draws your menu bar, your dropdown and your window, with your Mac's real figures in them. What you see there is what you get.

## The menu bar

At the top of the page is your menu bar, a little larger than life.

- **Click an item** to change it. You pick how it looks from pictures: a value, a graph or both, with or without its icon.
- **Click +** to add a readout: CPU, memory, GPU, network, disk, temperature or battery.
- **Drag a readout onto the Vitals item** to put it inside. Drag it out to make it an item of its own.
- **Drag one readout onto another** inside the Vitals item to change their order. Or click its arrow and choose Move Left or Move Right.

Items of their own keep the order macOS gives them. To change it, hold ⌘ and drag them in the real menu bar, the same as any other menu bar item.

## The dropdown

Below the menu bar is the dropdown, with its tabs across the top, the tiles, and the busiest apps right now.

Drag a tab or a tile to a new place, and the others step aside. Hide the ones you never look at. You can also choose tiles or a list, and a glass or a solid background, again from pictures.

## The window

The last picture is the window. Drag its tabs into the order you like. Click a tab to arrange that tab, then drag its cards and sections into place, or hide them with the ✕.

Overview always stays first. Everything else is yours to move.

## Small things that took the longest

The first version of the page shipped in 1.3.1. It worked, but dragging did not feel right, so I kept at it for two more releases.

- **The pieces move as you drag.** A readout, tab, tile, card or section follows the pointer, and the others make room before you let go.
- **A drag starts from anywhere on the piece.** There is no small handle to aim for.
- **The lists drag too.** The plain lists on the page can be dragged into order too, if you prefer a list.
- **It works with VoiceOver.** Every move you can make by dragging is also an action VoiceOver can do.

## How to get it

Open Vitals, then **Settings → Layout**. The page is in Vitals 1.3.1 and later, and 1.3.4 is the one to have. The full list of changes is in the [changelog](https://vitalsmac.com/changelog).

The update is free for everyone who owns Vitals. Vitals offers it the next time it checks for updates. New to Vitals? [Get it for Mac](https://vitalsmac.com/#pricing).

If something on the Layout page does not go where you drop it, [email me](mailto:hi@vitalsmac.com). I will fix it in the next release.