It shows a frequently updated list of the processes running on a computer, normally ordered by the amount of CPU usage.

htop uses color and gives visual information about processor, swap and memory status.

Users often deploy htop in cases where Unix top does not provide enough information about the system's processes.

[3] Compared to top, it provides a more convenient, visual, cursor-controlled interface for sending signals to processes.

Cross-platform, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and OS X (now macOS) support was added in htop 2.0.