Taskbar Metrics

CPU, GPU, RAM, DISK and NET metrics on the left side of the stock Windows 11 x64 taskbar. Rust, the standard library and system Windows DLLs. No third-party crates, services, Windhawk, C/C++, .NET or COM registration in the registry.

• Taskbar tiles with numbers and charts; every drive (mapped SMB shares included), network adapter and graphics card can have its own tile. Reorder them by dragging.
• History window: 5-minute charts, picking a moment on the chart and the processes that used resources at exactly that time; process pinning, search, light and dark themes, English and Russian.
• Background history is recorded even while the window is closed; DISK/NET process history comes from ETW.
• Temperature of the GPU via WDDM and of the CPU via the official PawnIO driver.
• Settings for tiles, colors and alerts right in the window, autostart when signing in to Windows.

Quick start

Install with TaskbarMetrics-Setup-<version>.exe, or run TaskbarMetrics-Portable-<version>.exe without installing (how they differ). To build from source, you need Rust with the x86_64-pc-windows-msvc target, the MSVC linker and the Windows SDK.

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\build.ps1
.\target\package\TaskbarMetrics.exe            # attach the tiles to Explorer
.\target\package\TaskbarMetrics.Window.exe     # open the history window
.\target\package\TaskbarMetrics.exe --dump     # the recorded history for scripts and agents
.\target\package\TaskbarMetrics.exe --stop     # close the program, as the tray icon does

Administrator rights are needed only for DISK/NET process history (ETW) and the CPU temperature. Setup asks once; the portable and a source build ask at each start.

Documentation

Page	About
History window	Charts, process table, pins, window settings
Taskbar tiles	Placement, appearance, charts, tile editor
Metrics	Where each number comes from
Configuration	taskbar-metrics.conf and the other data files
Background history	Collector, CSV export, limitations
CPU temperature	PawnIO, supported processors
Building and running	Package, arguments, exit codes, checks
Architecture	Components, adding a metric, integration risks
Contributing	Code rules, commit types and scopes
UI kit	Window specification and tokens

Limitations

The integration uses XAML Diagnostics and Explorer's internal tree — this is not a public API, and a Windows update may require changes to the platform adapter. Replacing the DLL requires restarting Explorer. Windows 10, Windows Server, ARM64 and third-party taskbar replacements are not supported. See Architecture for details.

License

MIT. The PawnIO modules in vendor/pawnio are distributed under LGPL-2.1-or-later — see vendor/pawnio/README.md. Security issues: SECURITY.md.