monitor

Monitor

Minimalist terminal system monitor for Windows. Real-time dashboard showing CPU, memory, GPU, disk I/O, network, temperatures, and top processes.

Features

• CPU — rolling waveform chart (area graph over time, like Task Manager) with real-time utilisation % and actual boost clock speed
• Memory — RAM and swap usage bars with percentage and byte breakdown
• GPU — NVIDIA utilisation, VRAM usage, and temperature (via NVML)
• Disks — active time % (same metric as Task Manager), per-drive read/write throughput, storage %
• Temperatures — CPU package/core temps and GPU temp
• Network — current, average, and peak download/upload speeds (rolling 60s window)
• Processes — two side-by-side panels: top 6 by CPU usage, top 6 by RAM usage

How It Works

Most lightweight monitors on Windows get two things wrong: they report the static base clock instead of the real boost frequency, and they show disk space used instead of disk activity.

This monitor fixes both:

• CPU clock speed — Reads real-time per-core MHz from LibreHardwareMonitor's HTTP API and averages them. Shows your actual ~4.1 GHz boost, not the 2.5 GHz base clock that psutil.cpu_freq() returns.
• Disk active time % — Uses the Windows PDH (Performance Data Helper) API via ctypes to read \PhysicalDisk(*)\% Disk Time, the same counter Task Manager uses. Drive letters are mapped to physical disks at startup using IOCTL_STORAGE_GET_DEVICE_NUMBER — no WMI or PowerShell needed (instant).

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• Python 3.10+
• NVIDIA GPU (optional, for GPU panel)
• LibreHardwareMonitor with web server enabled on port 8085 (optional, for CPU temps and real clock speeds)

Setup

pip install -r requirements.txt

To enable CPU temperatures and real-time clock speed: open LibreHardwareMonitor, go to Options, Remote Web Server, and click Run.

Usage

python monitor.py

Refreshes every 2 seconds. The CPU waveform builds up history as it runs — give it a minute to see the trend.

Configuration

Edit the constants at the top of monitor.py:

Variable	Default	Description
REFRESH	2.0	Seconds between updates
CHART_H	7	Height of CPU waveform (rows)
BAR_W	20	Width of horizontal bars
DRIVES	["C:\\", "D:\\"]	Which drives to monitor
PROC_COUNT	6	Number of processes per panel
LHM_REFRESH	10	Seconds between LHM queries

Windows Terminal Profile

Add to your Windows Terminal settings.json to launch with one click. Only starts LHM if it's not already running, and skips the wait if it is:

{
    "name": "Monitor",
    "commandline": "powershell -NoProfile -Command \"if (-not (Get-Process LibreHardwareMonitor -EA 0)) { Start-Process 'C:\\path\\to\\LibreHardwareMonitor.exe' -WindowStyle Hidden; Start-Sleep 3 }; python path\\to\\monitor.py\"",
    "hidden": false
}

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
psutil	CPU, memory, disk, network, process stats
rich	Terminal UI rendering (panels, bars, tables, live refresh)
pynvml	NVIDIA GPU stats via NVML

No external binaries required. LibreHardwareMonitor is optional — without it, CPU temps and real clock speed won't be available, but everything else works.