The classic top shows you processes; when your workload is containers, you want the same thing one level up. ctop is exactly that: a compact, real-time, top-like view of your running containers. In one screen it shows each container's CPU, memory, network, and disk I/O, updating live, so you can immediately see which container is busy, which is leaking memory, and which is idle.
Container Metrics at a Glance
Run it and you get a live table, sortable and expandable:
# Launch the live container dashboard
ctop
# Sort by CPU, expand a container for detail,
# and open a single-container view for logs and stats
Quick Triage
ctop is built for the fast "what's going on right now" check. Sort by CPU or memory to find the hot container, select one for a detailed single-container view, and jump to its logs or a shell. It's lighter-weight than a full monitoring stack and instantly available whenever you have a terminal.
Rough Edges and Limitations
- Live snapshot, not history. It shows the current moment; for trends over time you want real monitoring.
- Metrics-focused. It's about resource usage; full management is lazydocker's job.
- Needs the daemon. It reads from the container runtime, which must be accessible.
For a fast answer to "which container is eating my CPU," ctop is the top you already know, pointed at your containers.
Internal link suggestion: link "full management" to the lazydocker post, its management-focused counterpart.