System Status

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System Status is an application used for monitoring hardware and software state of your iOS device. All the information it offers is split into seven pages: Overview, Work Time, Disk Details, Routing Table, Memory, Details and About. Under iPad, these pages are available from the page list displayed on the left when the device is in the landscape mode or after pressing the Pages button in portrait mode. Under iPhone or iPod Touch, some of the pages can be accessed via the tab bar at the bottom of the screen; the rest is accessible from the Overview page.

Some of the displayed values (for which it makes sense) can be copied. Hold the value to invoke the Copy popup.

Some of the pages displaying lists of values do not refresh automatically to improve readability. To refresh the values either use the pull-to-refresh feature or press the action button in the toolbar and select the Refresh item.

Many of the pages also offer the export functionality. Simply press the action button in the toolbar and select the desired type of export.

The Overview page displays the most commonly used info about your device.

Battery Status

Displays the remaining battery power together with the battery state (discharging, charging, full).

Disk Usage

Displays the amount of used and free disk space, and the total available disk space.

CPU Usage

Displays the amount of CPU consumed by the operating system and applications in real time.

Avg Load displays the average system load in the last 1, 5, 15 minutes.

System Uptime

Displays the time when the device was booted and how long the system has been running since then.

Connections

Default Gateway displays the IP address of the connected router and DNS Server the address of the used DNS server.

With System Status it is possible to retrieve the IP of your device (or router) as seen from the Internet. To avoid Internet connection when not necessary, the retrieval of external IP is performed manually by pressing the Reload button. Loading... is displayed while the IP address is being retrieved. When the IP address cannot be determined, or there was an error during its retrieval, N/A is displayed.

Wi-Fi Information

Displays information about the Wi-Fi network: whether the device is connected using Wi-Fi, SSID, BSSID, IP address, subnet mask, the MAC address and data received & sent since boot.

Cell Information

Displays information about the cellular network: whether the device is connected using the cellular network, the IP address, carrier name, mobile country code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC), whether VOIP is supported by the network and data received & sent since boot. This information is displayed only on devices with carrier network support and when SIM card is inserted.

Resource Graphs

The Resource Graph page is displayed after pressing the graph button in the toolbar. When displayed, the graph shows real-time information about CPU, memory, battery and disk usage. The graph can be paused by the red pause toolbar button. Afterwards, the graph can be panned and zoomed by using multitouch gestures on the graph area.

The graph can also be used for monitoring background activities. System Status can record up to 3 minutes of background activity which can then be displayed using the graph. The graph points which were recorded in the background are between brown vertical lines with bg and fg labels.

The button next to the play/pause button cycles between resource/wifi/cell usage graphs.

The Work Time page displays more detailed information about the remaining battery power.

Estimated Work Time

Displays estimated work time for various usage scenarios based on official battery work time data provided by Apple and the remaining battery power.

Settings

The Battery Health settings can be used to decrease the work time estimations, which may be useful for older batteries with lower capacity.

The Disk Details page displays some statistics about the stored files such as song number, podcast number, audiobook number and others. Two numbers are displayed for each of the items - the number of locally stored items and the number of items stored in the iCloud (e.g., uploaded using iTunes Match or bought online). In addition, it shows all the mounted file systems together with the amount of free space on each of them.

The Routing Table page displays the network routing table (for IP and IPv6). Each row contains the following values (see, e.g., this page for more info):

• Destination - destination address

• Gateway - gateway used for the given address

• Netif - network interface name

• Flags - described below

• Refs - number of active uses of the route (iPad only)

• Use - number of packets sent using the route (iPad only)

• Mtu - maximum transmission unit (iPad only)

• Expire - number of seconds in which the route expires (iPad only)

The flags field contains one or more of the flags below:

• B (BLACKHOLE) - just discard packets (during updates)

• b (BROADCAST) - the route represents a broadcast address

• C (CLONING) - generate new routes on use

• D (DYNAMIC) - created dynamically (by redirect)

• G (GATEWAY) - destination requires forwarding by intermediary

• H (HOST) - host entry (net otherwise)

• I (IFSCOPE) - route is associated with an interface scope

• i (IFREF) - route is holding a reference to the interface

• L (LLINFO) - valid protocol to link address translation

• M (MODIFIED) - modified dynamically (by redirect)

• m (MULTICAST) - the route represents a multicast address

• R (REJECT) - host or net unreachable

• S (STATIC) - manually added

• U (UP) - route usable

• W (WASCLONED) - route was generated as a result of cloning

• X (XRESOLVE) - external daemon translates proto to link address

The Memory page displays detailed information about memory usage and some low-level page statistics.

By pressing the refresh button in the top left corner, you can release about 35% of the system memory. Note that the effect of this feature on the system's performance is questionable. Contrary to the popular belief, operating systems should always try to maximize the system memory usage (if 50% of memory is always free, why not to buy a cheaper device with less memory?). For instance, by keeping recently used apps in the memory iOS can relaunch them immediately when you decide to switch back to them, Safari can, for instance, keep the recently accessed websites for the same reason, etc. This memory can be released immediately by iOS when some app requires more memory, so it basically behaves as if it was free and is immediately available for reuse. The latest iOS versions have improved the way the system memory is managed (in addition, the latest devices have considerably more memory than the original iPhone) and in general it is better to let the operating system decide how to manage its resources.

How exactly does the memory release work? It allocates a sufficient amount of memory (those 35%), so iOS is forced to make this memory available for the app by closing other apps and giving this memory to System Status. Afterwards, System Status releases this memory again, and the memory is returned to iOS. The same will happen when opening any other app which requires more memory, so the manual release does not make much sense.

Memory Usage

Displays the current memory usage together with total memory and page size. Memory is subdivided into the following categories:

• Wired - memory used by the operating system. Not usable by user applications.

• Active - memory used by running applications.

• Inactive - memory used by applications that are no longer running. Keeping this data in memory can speed-up re-execution of those applications. On the other hand, when necessary, this memory can be given to the applications that need more memory.

• Other - memory which is not categorized by the operating system. In other words, Other = Total - Free - Wired - Active - Inactive.

• Free - free memory not used by any application.

The graph button in the top-right corner of the page reveals the graph displaying memory usage over time. The graph behaves the same way as the resource graph from the Overview page.

Page Statistics

Displays low-level page statistics. For a detailed explanation of the used terms and statistics, please refer to the following Wikipedia articles: Page, Paging, Page Fault, Virtual Memory, Copy-on-write.

The Details page displays various information about the operating system and hardware features.

Operating System

Displays the iOS version, system build number, and kernel version.

Device Information

Displays some details about the device such as the device model, device name, and hostname.

CPU Information

Displays detailed information about the CPU and GPU such as CPU and GPU models, CPU core number, CPU and BUS frequency, cache sizes, etc.

Hardware Features

Displays information about the presence of various hardware features such as camera, microphone, speaker, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, accelerometer, gyroscopic sensor, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, magnetometer, etc.

The About page shows information about System Status and provides some useful links.

Please have a look at the Knowledge Base for the complete list of frequently asked questions and further support.