System Status
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System Status is an application used for monitoring the hardware and software state of your iOS device. All the information it offers is split into seven pages: Overview, Work Time, Storage Details, Routing Table, Memory, Details, and About. On iPad, these pages are available from the page list displayed on the left when the device is in landscape mode, or after pressing the Pages button in portrait mode. On iPhone or iPod Touch, some of the pages can be accessed via the tab bar at the bottom of the screen; the rest are accessible from the Overview page.
Some of the displayed values can be copied where applicable. 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 export functionality. Simply press the action button in the toolbar and select the desired type of export.
Overview
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).
Storage Usage
Displays the amount of used and free storage space, and the total available storage 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 over the last 1, 5, and 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 using the Internet connection when not necessary, the retrieval of the 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 via 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 via 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 a 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 storage usage. The graph can be paused by the red pause toolbar button. Afterwards, the graph can be panned and zoomed 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 that 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.
Work Time
The Work Time page displays more detailed information about the remaining battery power.
Estimated Work Time
Displays the 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 setting can be used to decrease the work time estimations, which may be useful for older batteries with lower capacity.
Storage Details
The Storage Details page displays some statistics about the stored files, such as the number of songs, podcasts, audiobooks, and others. Two numbers are displayed for each item — the number of locally stored items and the number of items stored in 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.
Routing Table
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
Memory
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 popular belief, operating systems should always try to maximize system memory usage (if 50% of the memory is always free, why not buy a cheaper device with less memory?). For instance, by keeping recently used apps in memory, iOS can relaunch them immediately when you decide to switch back to them; Safari can, for example, keep recently accessed websites for the same reason; and so on. This memory can be released immediately by iOS when an app requires more memory, so it basically behaves as if it were free and is immediately available for reuse. The latest iOS versions have improved the way 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 to the app by closing other apps and giving the memory to System Status. Afterwards, System Status releases this memory again, and it is returned to iOS. The same thing will happen when opening any other app that requires more memory, so the manual release doesn't 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 applications that need more memory.
- Other — memory that 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 a graph displaying memory usage over time. The graph behaves the same way as the resource graph on the Overview page.
Page Statistics
Displays low-level page statistics. For a detailed explanation of the terms and statistics used, please refer to the following Wikipedia articles: Page, Paging, Page Fault, Virtual Memory, Copy-on-write.
Details
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, number of CPU cores, 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.
About
The About page shows information about System Status and provides some useful links.
FAQ
Please have a look at the Knowledge Base for the complete list of frequently asked questions and further support.