How can I get the load average (and only the load average) on Mac OS X?

Solution 1:

You can also use this sysctl:

sysctl -n vm.loadavg

Take the commands you know (top, uptime, w, etc.) and use other tools to reduce to just the data you want.

An example for w:

w | head -n1 | cut -d":" -f4

An example for uptime:

uptime | cut -d":" -f4- | sed s/,//g

An example of loads.d:

sudo loads.d | awk '/./ { printf "%.2f %.2f %.2f\n", $7, $8, $9 }'