Open source · htop, but for ports
A live terminal UI for the TCP and UDP sockets on your machine. Each row shows the process, its systemd unit or Windows service and its Docker container, and one key lets you inspect or stop it.
$ curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/padovanl/portop/main/install.sh | sh
Green is listening, blue is established, amber is a port that just opened.
ss leaves outThe context that ss, netstat and lsof don't give you, in one view that refreshes on its own.
Listening and established sockets, colored by state, with per-process CPU and port names from /etc/services. Columns drop out as the terminal narrows.
Each listening port is colored by exposure: every interface, one address or loopback only. The host firewall's verdict says whether traffic actually gets in.
The systemd unit or Windows service, and the Docker, Podman or Kubernetes container behind each port, read from cgroups with no daemon of its own.
A socket shared by nginx, gunicorn or php-fpm shows as one row owned by the master, nginx +3, with its workers listed.
enter shows the command line, user, memory and start time. k confirms, re-checks the process identity, then sends SIGTERM or SIGKILL.
Bytes per second for every established TCP connection, on Linux from the kernel's socket diagnostics and on macOS from nettop.
--wait 5432 blocks until a service listens; --free 3000 stops whatever holds a port and waits until it is released.
--save-baseline, then --diff from cron: exit code 3 when a port appears, disappears or becomes reachable from the network.
--compose DIR checks a Compose project's published ports, with ${VARIABLES} resolved, against what actually listens.
Ports that start listening are highlighted live, with an optional desktop notification on Linux, macOS and Windows.
--json for scripts and jq; the web dashboard serves /metrics for Prometheus, with basic auth when sign-in is on.
The settings screen (,) previews 13 themes live and lets you rebind any of 20 actions. Changes are saved automatically.
Filtering to a port, opening the process details and confirming a kill, recorded as it happened.
The same live view of ports and processes, for when a terminal is not at hand.
portop --web serves a dashboard on 127.0.0.1:8088 with search, process details and confirmed SIGTERM/SIGKILL. With --web-auth it adds a sign-in page, can listen beyond loopback and serves HTTPS via --web-tls-cert and --web-tls-key.
On Linux, copy cockpit/portop to ~/.local/share/cockpit/portop and open Tools → Ports (portop). It runs through Cockpit's bridge with your login and permissions, so there is no extra service to expose. Setup steps.
Packages for Debian and Ubuntu, Snap, Homebrew, winget and the Microsoft Store, plus archives for every supported architecture.
Linux and macOS. Detects the architecture, verifies the release checksum and installs to /usr/local/bin, or ~/.local/bin if that is not writable.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/padovanl/portop/main/install.sh | sh
To override detection, download the script and set PORTOP_ARCH to amd64, arm64, armv7 or armv6 (macOS accepts amd64 and arm64). On ARM64 kernels, getconf LONG_BIT is used to spot a 32-bit userland.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/padovanl/portop/main/install.sh -o install.sh PORTOP_ARCH=armv7 sh install.sh
Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives on amd64, arm64 and armhf. The signed repository at apt.lucapadovan.dev is rebuilt on every release, so updates arrive with apt upgrade.
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://apt.lucapadovan.dev/lucapadovan.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/lucapadovan.gpg >/dev/null echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/lucapadovan.gpg] https://apt.lucapadovan.dev stable main" \ | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/lucapadovan.list sudo apt update && sudo apt install portop
Any Linux distribution with snapd, on amd64 and arm64. Snaps update automatically. Snap Store page.
sudo snap install portop
macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux, from homebrew-core.
brew install portop
Windows 10 1809 or later and Windows 11, on x64 and ARM64. Each option puts portop on your PATH.
winget install padovanl.portop
Or install it from the Microsoft Store, which keeps it up to date.
Download portop_<version>_windows_amd64.zip (or windows_arm64) from the latest release and put portop.exe in a folder on your PATH. In PowerShell:
# <version> is the release number without the leading "v" $zip = "portop_<version>_windows_amd64.zip" # ARM64: windows_arm64 Invoke-WebRequest "https://github.com/padovanl/portop/releases/latest/download/$zip" -OutFile $zip $dir = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\portop" Expand-Archive $zip -DestinationPath $dir -Force # add it to your user PATH, then open a new terminal [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", [Environment]::GetEnvironmentVariable("Path", "User") + ";$dir", "User")
Socket owners are visible without elevation. Open an Administrator terminal to see details of elevated or other users' processes.
Apple Silicon and Intel. Homebrew keeps portop up to date with brew upgrade; the install script also works.
brew install portop
Use darwin_arm64 for Apple Silicon or darwin_amd64 for Intel.
archive="portop_<version>_darwin_arm64.tar.gz" # Intel: darwin_amd64
curl -fLO "https://github.com/padovanl/portop/releases/latest/download/$archive"
tar -xzf "$archive"
sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
sudo install -m 755 portop /usr/local/bin/portop
The release binaries are not notarized, so a browser download may trigger Gatekeeper. After checking that the binary comes from this repository's release:
portop. If macOS shows “portop” Not Opened, click Done.portop again, confirm Open Anyway and authenticate.See Apple's instructions for your macOS version.
portop uses the system's lsof and ps. Run sudo portop to include other users' processes. Systemd, Docker Desktop VM process metadata and thread counts are not available on macOS; containers are recognised by the ports Docker Desktop publishes.
Single packages from the latest release. They do not update on their own; on Debian and Ubuntu, prefer the APT repository. Replace linux_amd64 with your target from the table below.
# Debian, Ubuntu curl -fLO https://github.com/padovanl/portop/releases/latest/download/portop_<version>_linux_amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i portop_<version>_linux_amd64.deb # Fedora, RHEL (openSUSE: sudo zypper install ...) sudo dnf install ./portop_<version>_linux_amd64.rpm
Static binaries with no runtime dependencies. Replace linux_amd64 with your target.
curl -fLO https://github.com/padovanl/portop/releases/latest/download/portop_<version>_linux_amd64.tar.gz tar -xzf portop_<version>_linux_amd64.tar.gz sudo install -m 755 portop /usr/local/bin/portop
Builds from source with a recent Go toolchain. Package documentation.
go install github.com/padovanl/portop/cmd/portop@latest
| System | Architecture | Target | Available as | Requirements |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🐧 Linux | x86-64 | linux_amd64 | APT, Snap, Homebrew, .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz | amd64 baseline (v1). |
| 🐧 Linux | ARM64 | linux_arm64 | APT, Snap, Homebrew, .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz | 64-bit OS, ARMv8.0 baseline. |
| 🐧 Linux | ARMv7 | linux_armv7 | APT (armhf), .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz | Hardware floating point (VFPv3). |
| 🐧 Linux | ARMv6 | linux_armv6 | APT (armhf), .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz | Hardware floating point (VFP); Raspberry Pi 1 and Zero. |
| 🍎 macOS | Intel | darwin_amd64 | Homebrew, .tar.gz | 64-bit Intel Mac. |
| 🍎 macOS | Apple Silicon | darwin_arm64 | Homebrew, .tar.gz | Native ARM64, no Rosetta. |
| 🪟 Windows | x64 | windows_amd64 | winget, Microsoft Store, .zip | Windows 10 1809 or later. |
| 🪟 Windows | ARM64 | windows_arm64 | winget, Microsoft Store, .zip | Windows 11 on ARM. |
armv7, or armv6 for older CPUs.armel, big-endian ARM, 32-bit x86 and 32-bit Windows.armhf metadata; install only one. The APT repository serves the ARMv6 build, which also runs on ARMv7. RPM labels are x86_64, aarch64, armv6hl and armv7hl./proc/net must be readable. Inside a container portop sees that container's network namespace. Root may be needed to identify other users' processes.docker-proxy; without it, the port is still reported but the expected service may be unknown.docker CLI, and both kill choices end the process.Also in the app with ?. Every binding can be changed from the settings screen or in config.yml.