Android CPU usage: What do the red, green and purple bars and the numbers mean? The Internet as a truckload of myths about this. Today, it is time to bust the myths.

When the CPU usage bars that can be enabled in the developer options are being displayed, there is a list of active processes and three numbers above.Upper right screen corner (also covered by bars):

14.41 / 20.85 / 40.19

And then, there are three bars for each list item:[Green bar (usually the longest)] [red bar] [purple]

What do these bars and numbers actually mean?

 I would appreciate an explaination.
From Android - Handset built in Developer Tools - “Show Cpu Usage” option meaning?

Leszek's answer


  Numbers in the first row shows average CPU usage in time intervals 1 minute/5 minutes/15 minutes. Color bars shows how much time CPU spends in userspace(green), kernel(red), i/o(blue).


Also see the accepted answer for a developer explanation