portop

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portop is an htop-style terminal UI for the TCP and UDP sockets on a machine. For every port it shows the process, its systemd unit or Windows service, its Docker, Podman or Kubernetes container, who can reach it and what the firewall does with it, and it lets you inspect or stop the owner from the keyboard. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, in the terminal, in a browser or inside Cockpit.

✨ Features

See what is using your ports

• A live table of listening and established sockets with process, PID, CPU, user and service names (:22 ssh), sortable by any column.
• The systemd unit or Windows service, and the Docker, Podman or Kubernetes container behind each socket, read from cgroups with no daemon of its own.
• One row for a server's master and its workers: nginx +3.
• Bytes per second for every established TCP connection (Linux, macOS).

Know who can reach them

• Listening ports colored by exposure: every interface, one address or loopback only.
• The host firewall's verdict for exposed ports: allowed, restricted to some sources, or blocked.

Act on them

• Process details, and SIGTERM or SIGKILL after a confirmation that re-checks the process identity.
• --wait 5432 blocks until a service listens; --free 3000 stops whatever holds a port and waits until it is released.
• Open a port in the browser, copy a row, filter by any word.

Catch changes

• New listening ports are highlighted live, with an optional desktop notification.
• --save-baseline and --diff (exit code 3) report ports that appear, disappear or become reachable from the network, from cron or CI.
• --compose DIR checks a Docker Compose project's published ports against what actually listens.

Use it anywhere

• --json for scripts, a web dashboard with sign-in, TLS and Prometheus /metrics, and a Cockpit add-on.
• 13 themes and remappable keys from a live settings screen.

📥 Install

System	Command
Debian, Ubuntu	APT repository
Linux (Snap)	sudo snap install portop
macOS, Linux	brew install portop
Windows	winget install padovanl.portop, or the Microsoft Store
Linux, macOS	curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/padovanl/portop/main/install.sh | sh
From source	go install github.com/padovanl/portop/cmd/portop@latest

The APT repository serves amd64, arm64 and armhf:

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

Release archives cover Linux on amd64, arm64, ARMv7 and ARMv6, macOS on Intel and Apple Silicon, and Windows on x64 and ARM64, with .deb and .rpm packages for Linux. See Installation for every option.

⌨️ Usage

portop                      # the live table
portop nginx 443            # filtered: every word must match
portop --listen             # listening sockets only
portop --json               # one snapshot for scripts

portop --wait 5432          # exit 0 once something listens
portop --free 3000          # stop whatever holds the port

portop --save-baseline      # record what listens now
portop --diff               # exit 3 if that changed
portop --compose ./stack    # audit a Compose project's ports

portop --web                # dashboard on http://127.0.0.1:8088

Run sudo portop (an Administrator terminal on Windows) to see other users' processes and read the firewall. In the table, press ? for help and , for settings. The documentation covers every flag, the JSON fields, exit codes and what each platform supports.

🆚 Why not just ss -tlnp?

	ss / netstat	lsof	bandwhich	portop
Live, refreshing view	❌	❌	✅	✅
Owning process	✅	✅	✅	✅
systemd unit, Windows service	❌	❌	❌	✅
Docker, Podman, Kubernetes	❌	❌	❌	✅
Exposure and firewall verdict	❌	❌	❌	✅
Per-connection traffic	✅ -ti	❌	✅	✅
Stop the owner, safely	❌	❌	❌	✅
--wait / --free for scripts	❌	❌	❌	✅
Baseline drift, Compose audit	❌	❌	❌	✅
Web dashboard, Prometheus	❌	❌	❌	✅
Linux, macOS and Windows	✅	❌	✅	✅

📚 Documentation

• Installation and first run
• The table: columns, colors, keys
• Command line and scripting
• Baseline drift and Compose audit
• Containers, firewall and traffic
• Web dashboard and metrics, Cockpit add-on
• Configuration and platform support

The documentation is generated from docs-src/ with python3 scripts/build-docs.py; preview the whole site with python3 scripts/serve-pages.py.

🤝 Contributing

Pull requests are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md. Open them against develop, and run gofmt -l . && go vet ./... && go test ./... before pushing.

📄 License

MIT. See LICENSE.