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Open Source DevOps

Cross-platform CLI + interactive TUI to list and kill processes by port.

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  • Fast & Lightweight Performance
  • Cross-Platform
  • Developer Productivity
  • Open Source
PortSlayer app screen
Developer Focused Fast, safe and simple port management from the terminal.

What is PortSlayer

Find and kill whatever is squatting on your ports.

Every developer knows the moment: you try to start a dev server and get slapped with Error: address already in use :3000. Somewhere, an old Node process, a zombie Python server, or a forgotten Docker proxy is still holding that port hostage — and normally you’d have to dig through lsof, netstat, or Task Manager just to find out what, let alone kill it safely.

PortSlayer (pk) is a free, open-source CLI and terminal dashboard that finds and kills whatever is squatting on your ports — in seconds. Run pk with no arguments for a full-screen, keyboard-driven dashboard — arrow keys to navigate, / to search, k to kill with confirmation — or script it from the CLI with JSON output. Free and open source under MIT, for Windows and Linux.

It’s built for the moments that actually slow developers down: freeing a stuck port before a demo, cleaning up after a crashed test run, or scripting port cleanup into a CI pipeline. Every kill asks for confirmation by default, so you never terminate the wrong process by accident.

Features

Everything you need to manage ports, right from your terminal.

  • Interactive TUI Dashboard

    Run pk with no arguments for a full-screen, keyboard-driven view of every listening port.

  • Partial port search

    Search by port fragment instead of exact numbers.

    pk find 808

  • Kill by process name

    Skip the port lookup entirely and terminate by process name.

    pk kill --name node

  • JSON output

    Machine-readable output for scripting, CI checks, and automation pipelines.

    pk list --json

  • Shell completion

    Tab-complete commands and flags in your shell with a single setup command.

    pk --install-completion

  • Safety-first design

    Every kill asks for confirmation unless you pass –force, with no shell injection surface.

How it works

Up and running in 3 steps

  1. List

    Run pk to see every listening port and the process holding it, live.

  2. Find

    Search by port fragment or process name — pk find 808.

  3. Kill

    Terminate safely with a confirmation prompt, or skip it with --force.

Screenshots

Take a look at PortSlayer

  • PortSlayer interactive TUI dashboard

    Interactive TUI DashboardLive port and process management

  • PortSlayer safe kill confirmation screen

    Safe Kill ConfirmationReview process details before action

Install

Own it. Fork it. Ship it.

PortSlayer is 100% free and open source under the MIT license — install it in seconds, read every line of the source, or send a pull request.

  • MIT License
  • Python
  • Windows & Linux

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# Install using pip

pip install portslayer

# Upgrade to latest version

pip install --upgrade portslayer

Free and open source

Free up your ports in seconds.

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