ps-list

Get running processes

Works on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Windows ARM64 is not supported yet.

Install

npm install ps-list

Usage

import psList from 'ps-list';

console.log(await psList());
//=> [{pid: 3213, name: 'node', cmd: 'node test.js', ppid: 1, uid: 501, cpu: 0.1, memory: 1.5, path: '/usr/local/bin/node', startTime: 2025-01-15T10:30:00.000Z}, …]

API

psList(options?)

Returns a Promise<ProcessDescriptor[]> with the running processes.

On macOS and Linux:

• The name property is truncated to 15 characters by the system
• The cmd property contains the full command line with arguments
• The cpu property is the CPU usage percentage (0-100)
• The memory property is the memory usage percentage (0-100)
• The path property is a best-effort attempt to get the full executable path:
  • On Linux: reads from /proc/{pid}/exe when available
  • On macOS: extracted from command line when possible
  • Falls back to comm (which may be truncated)
• The startTime property contains the process start time as a Date object

The cmd, cpu, memory, uid, path, and startTime properties are not available on Windows.

options

Type: object

all

Type: boolean
Default: true

Include other users' processes as well as your own.

On Windows this has no effect and will always be the user's own processes.

Related

• fastlist - The binary used in this module to list the running processes on Windows