Sloth Documentation

Sloth

Sloth is a native Mac app that shows all open files, directories,
sockets, pipes, and devices in use by all running processes on your
system. This makes it easy to inspect which apps are using which files, etc.

• View all open files, directories, IP sockets, devices, Unix domain sockets, and pipes
• Filter by name, access mode, volume, type, location, or using regular expressions
• Sort by process name, file count, type, process ID, user ID, Carbon PSN, bundle UTI, etc.
• View IP socket status, protocol, port and version
• View sockets and pipes established between processes
• Inspection window with detailed macOS and Unix file/socket/process info
• Powerful contextual menu for file operations
• In-app authentication to scan with root privileges
• Very fast, responsive native app written in Objective-C/Cocoa

Sloth is essentially a friendly, exploratory graphical user interface built
on top of the lsof command line tool.
The output of lsof is parsed and shown in a sortable, searchable outline
view with all sorts of convenient additional functionality.
Check out the screenshots below.

Download Copy Chapter

Sloth is free, open source software and has been continuously developed
and maintained for a very long time (since 2004).
If you find this program useful, please make a donation.

• ⬇ Download Sloth 3.6
  (~1.3 MB, Universal ARM/Intel 64-bit, macOS 11 or later, Developer ID signed and notarized)

Sloth can also be installed via Homebrew (may not be the latest version):

brew install --cask sloth

If you need to run it on macOS 10.13-10.15, version 3.4 works just fine.
For 10.9-10.12, version 3.2 does the trick.
All older versions can be downloaded here.

Screenshots Copy Chapter

View open files

View IP sockets

View sockets and pipes between processes

Build Copy Chapter

Sloth can be built by running the following command in the
repository root (requires Xcode build tools):

make build_unsigned

Built products are created in products/.

BSD License Copy Chapter

Copyright (c) 2004-2026 Sveinbjorn Thordarson

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this
   list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this
   list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
   materials provided with the distribution.

3. Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may
   be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific
   prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT,
INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT
NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.