Kinetik is a free, open-source system monitor for the Windows 11 and Windows 10 taskbar, with a game overlay and an FPS counter. It shows live CPU and GPU temperature, usage, clock speed and power draw, RAM, network upload and download speed, ping, disk activity, and Bluetooth headphone and controller battery levels, right next to the system tray, like TrafficMonitor.
For gaming, its always-on-top FPS overlay shows the frame rate with 1% lows, a frame-time graph, render latency and the base frame rate before DLSS or FSR frame generation, for DirectX, Vulkan and OpenGL games, without hooking into them. There's also a desktop widget with live graphs, notifications when your PC runs hot, and benchmark recording to CSV.
Every stat can be switched on or off, reordered, restyled and grouped with dividers. It's a small portable app with no installer.
About this project: I originally made this for my own personal use and decided to share it in case anyone else finds it useful. If you run into a bug or have an idea for a feature, please open an issue. I'll do my best to look into it and implement what I can.
Latest version: v3.0.0. Download it from Releases.
- Features
- Desktop widget
- Game overlay
- Notifications
- Download and use
- Settings guide
- Tips and shortcuts
- CPU temperature
- Requirements
- Known limitations
- Version history
- Building from source
- Feedback
- License
Each one can be turned on or off. There are 44 in total.
| Category | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Network | Upload speed, download speed, total speed (upload + download), the app using the most network*, ping to any website or IP address, Wi-Fi signal strength, VPN status, public IP address |
| CPU | Usage, per-core usage bars, clock speed (GHz), temperature*, package power* |
| Memory | RAM usage %, RAM used / total (GB), committed memory % (includes the page file), RAM temperature* |
| GPU (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel) | Usage, temperature, hot spot temperature, memory temperature, clock speed (MHz), fan speed (% or RPM), VRAM used / total (GB), VRAM usage %, power draw. If you have more than one GPU, you can choose which one to show |
| Gaming* | FPS of the game or app in front (DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan), base FPS before DLSS / FSR frame generation, 1% and 0.1% lows, frame time with a graph, render latency |
| Storage | Disk activity %, read speed, write speed, free space on any drive, drive temperature* |
| System | Running processes, uptime, time, date |
| Batteries | Laptop battery % (with a + while charging), laptop battery time left, and Bluetooth headphones, mice, keyboards and controllers (each with an icon for its device type) |
* These need the app to run as administrator (see below). CPU power also works without admin on most PCs. Base FPS and render latency come from NVIDIA Reflex, which every DLSS frame generation game has.
The same bar can look very different. Here it is in the compact two-line layout:
And with text labels instead of icons and dot-style dividers:
- Arrange page: drag rows to set the left-to-right order. Rows follow the mouse, the others slide out of the way, and the page scrolls by itself when you drag near the edge. You can also use the ▲ / ▼ buttons, or select a row and press Alt+↑ / Alt+↓.
- Icon picker: click any stat's icon to choose one of 37 preset icons, No icon, or a short Text label such as
CPU,GPUorRAM. - Per-stat colours: in the same picker, give any stat or divider its own colour from 15 swatches or any custom colour.
- Dividers: add as many as you like to split stats into groups. Choose from four styles (line, dotted line, dot or blank space) and adjust their height.
- Spacing: sliders for the gap between stats, the gap between icon and value, edge padding, icon size, and line spacing in the two-line layout.
- Layout: one line, or a compact two-line layout that stacks stats in pairs.
- Text: any installed font and size. Monospace fonts keep numbers from jumping around.
- Colours: set colours for each group of icons, the value text, secondary text, the warning colour and the background. Or let the text match your light or dark taskbar automatically.
- Background: a rounded, see-through "pill" behind the stats, with adjustable colour, opacity and corner roundness.
- Warning limits: choose when values turn to the warning colour (CPU / RAM / GPU usage, CPU / GPU temperature, low battery, high ping, low disk space).
- Live preview at the top of the Settings window shows every change as you make it.
Alongside the taskbar bar, Kinetik can show a floating panel on your desktop, similar to LibreHardwareMonitor's gadget but more polished. Turn it on from the bar's right-click menu (Desktop widget) or in Settings → Widget.
- Grouped and labelled: stats sit under headings (Processor, Graphics, Memory, Network, Storage, System, Battery), with your CPU and GPU model names next to them
- Bars and graphs: each stat can have a coloured usage bar and a scrolling history graph. CPU cores get a per-thread bar chart.
- Four styles: Bars, Graphs, Bars and graphs, or Minimal
- Your look: dark, light or match-Windows theme, any background colour and opacity, size, width, corner roundness, shadow and an optional title
- Placement: on the desktop behind your windows, as a normal window, or always on top
- Moving it: drag it anywhere. It snaps to screen edges and remembers its position. Lock it in place, or make it click-through so clicks pass to whatever is underneath.
- Its own contents: choose which stats to show and drag them into any order, with optional dividers. Icons, colours and warning limits are shared with the bar.
- Graph history: 30 seconds, 1, 2 or 5 minutes
- Right-click the widget for Widget settings, Lock position and Hide widget
The widget costs nothing while it's switched off. Stats are only measured when the bar or the widget shows them.
Everything about the widget is set on the Widget page in Settings:
- Matches a light or dark taskbar automatically
- Hides itself in fullscreen games, videos and presentations
- Left-click opens Task Manager
- Tray icon: click it for Settings, right-click it for the menu (even while the bar is hidden), hover for a CPU / RAM / GPU summary
- Hover graphs: hover over any stat on the bar for its last minute as a graph, its minimum, average and maximum, and the processes using the most CPU, memory, GPU, disk or network
- Every monitor: optionally put the bar on each monitor's taskbar
- Profiles: save setups such as Gaming and Work and switch between them from the right-click menu, or back up every setting to a file
- Updates install themselves: Settings → About → Check for updates downloads the new version, checks it against the checksum in the release notes, and restarts Kinetik
- Optional run at startup. When it's running as admin, it's set up as an elevated scheduled task that runs a protected copy in
C:\Program Files\Kinetik, so there's no UAC prompt at login. - Update interval from 0.5 to 5 seconds
- Shift the bar left if it overlaps other taskbar icons
- About tab with the version number, a Check for updates button and the copyright
- About 15 MB of memory in use. v1.0 used about 100 MB.
- Only redraws when something on the bar has actually changed
- Sensors, performance counters, the Bluetooth battery scan and ping only run while their stats are switched on. The LibreHardwareMonitor sensor library only loads when a stat needs it, and unloads after a minute when nothing does.
- Hands unused memory back to Windows after startup and after closing Settings
A slim strip that stays on top of your game so you can watch your stats while you play.
The same overlay with icons instead of text labels:
Turn it on from the bar's right-click menu (Game overlay), in Settings → Overlay, or with Ctrl+Shift+F10, which also works from inside a game.
- FPS counter: shows the frame rate of whichever app is in front. It counts the frames Windows' graphics system reports, the same way PresentMon does, so it works with DirectX 9–12, OpenGL and Vulkan games without hooking into them. It needs Kinetik to run as administrator.
- Its own contents: choose which stats to show and drag them into any order, with optional dividers. The FPS counter can also go on the bar or the widget.
- Your look: text labels (
CPU,GPU,FPS…) or icons, size, and background opacity. Text has a soft shadow so it stays readable over bright scenes. - Moving it: drag it anywhere. It snaps to the screen's edges and top centre. Lock position makes it click-through, so your clicks go to the game. Unlock it from the bar's right-click menu.
- Works in: borderless and windowed games. Exclusive fullscreen owns the whole display, so no overlay can draw over it. Switch the game to borderless (often called "fullscreen windowed") to see it.
- Frame generation aware: FPS counts what reaches your screen, and Base FPS the frames the game renders itself, so you can see what DLSS or FSR frame generation adds. Base FPS and render latency work in games with NVIDIA Reflex.
- Stutter you can see: 1% and 0.1% lows over the last 10 seconds, and a frame-time graph of the last 3 seconds where spikes are stutters.
- Shows itself in games: with Show automatically in games on, it appears while a fullscreen or borderless game is in front and hides when you leave. With several monitors it moves to the game's monitor, and it closes with the game.
- Session summaries: when a game closes, a notification shows how long you played, the average FPS, the 1% low and the peak GPU temperature. Each session is saved to
Documents\Kinetik\Sessions.csv. - Benchmarks: Ctrl+Shift+F11 records every stat, each update, to a CSV file in
Documents\Kinetik\Benchmarks, for comparing settings or drivers.
Everything about the overlay is set on the Overlay page in Settings:
Kinetik can tell you when something needs attention, using Windows' own notifications (so Focus assist and Do not disturb apply). Pick them in Settings → General → Notifications:
- the CPU or GPU staying above its warning temperature for 30 seconds
- a Bluetooth device's battery, or the laptop's, dropping below its warning level
- the free-space drive running low
- ping staying high or timing out (off by default)
- Download
Kinetik.zipfrom the Releases page and extract it to a folder of your choice. It containsKinetik.exeand alibfolder. - Run
Kinetik.exe. The bar appears on your taskbar next to the tray icons. - Right-click the bar and choose Settings… to customise it, or Arrange stats… to go straight to the order and icons.
It's portable, with no installer. Keep the lib folder next to Kinetik.exe: it holds the LibreHardwareMonitor library that reads CPU temperature and AMD / Intel GPUs. Kinetik checks each DLL in it against the version it was built with and won't load one that's been changed. (If you turn on Run at startup as administrator, Kinetik copies itself to C:\Program Files\Kinetik along with its lib folder, so the elevated startup task runs a copy only admins can change.) Settings are saved in the registry at HKCU\Software\Kinetik.
Updating: from v3.0.0 on, use Settings → About → Check for updates, which installs the new version for you. Or right-click the bar, choose Exit, extract the new zip over your old folder (replacing Kinetik.exe and lib) and run it again. Your settings carry over. Versions up to v2.0.3 were a single exe; for those, put the new Kinetik.exe and lib folder where the old exe was.
Windows SmartScreen may warn you because the exe isn't code-signed. Click More info → Run anyway.
| Page | What's on it |
|---|---|
| Stats | Switch each stat on or off, grouped by Network, Processor, Memory, Graphics, Storage, System and Batteries. Also: the ping address, which GPU to show, which drive to measure free space on, and whether to show Bluetooth device names. |
| Arrange | The order of everything on the bar. Drag rows, click an icon to change it or its colour, + Add divider, remove dividers with ✕, and Reset order. Turn off Show switched-off stats to list only what's on your taskbar. |
| Appearance | Font and size, one or two lines, spacing sliders (with Reset spacing), divider style and height, hover graphs, animated icons and their frame rate, and the background pill's opacity and corner roundness. |
| Colours | Match the taskbar theme, text and warning colours, a colour for each icon group, and the background colour. |
| Overlay | Turn the game overlay on, show it automatically in games, move it to the game's monitor, close it with the game, the Ctrl+Shift+F10 hotkey, lock (click-through), position, session summaries, benchmark recording (Ctrl+Shift+F11), text labels or icons, size, background opacity, and its own Contents list. |
| Widget | Turn the desktop widget on, and set its placement, lock, click-through and snapping, style, theme, colours, size, width, roundness, shadow, animated icons, title, headings and graph history. Its Contents list works like the Arrange page. |
| General | Settings window background colour, update interval, shift left, left-click action, hide in fullscreen, show on all taskbars, tray icon (spinning, with a choice of backgrounds), taskbar button, desktop shortcut, warning limits, notifications, profiles and backup, run at startup, restart as administrator, and restore default settings. |
| About | Version number, Check for updates (installs a newer version for you), Include test versions, and copyright. |
 Stats |  Arrange |
 Appearance |  Colours |
Widget |  General |
Overlay |  About |
- Tray icon: click for Settings, right-click for the same menu as the bar. If it's hidden under the ^ arrow, drag it onto the taskbar.
- Right-click menu: Settings…, Arrange stats…, Desktop widget, Unlock desktop widget (when it's locked), Game overlay, Unlock game overlay (when it's locked), Record benchmark, Profiles, Refresh batteries now, Restart as administrator, Exit
- Widget: drag to move it, and right-click it for Widget settings, Lock position and Hide widget. If it's locked and click-through, unlock it from the bar's right-click menu.
- Game overlay: Ctrl+Shift+F10 shows or hides it, even in a game. Right-click it (while unlocked) for Overlay settings, Lock position and Hide overlay.
- Benchmarks: Ctrl+Shift+F11 starts and stops recording, even in a game
- Arrange page keys: ↑ / ↓ select a row, Alt+↑ / Alt+↓ (or Ctrl) move it, Space switches it on or off, Delete removes a divider
- Sliders: click one first, then use the mouse wheel or ← / → keys for fine adjustments
- Text labels instead of icons: open the icon picker and choose Text for a compact, icon-free look
- Grouping: add dividers, then pick a divider style on the Appearance page. Blank space gives gaps without lines.
- Command line:
Kinetik.exe --settings Arrangeopens Settings on a specific page (Stats, Arrange, Appearance, Colours, Widget, Overlay, General or About)
Windows doesn't provide CPU temperatures to normal apps, so Kinetik reads them through LibreHardwareMonitor's library, which ships in the lib folder next to the exe. This requires:
- Administrator rights: right-click the bar and choose Restart as administrator. To have it start elevated automatically, turn on Run at startup while it's running as admin.
- The PawnIO driver: it's installed along with the LibreHardwareMonitor app, or you can get it from pawnio.eu. If it's missing, Settings → General says so and has a Get PawnIO button. Restart Kinetik after installing it.
Without these, Kinetik falls back to what Windows provides itself:
- CPU power comes from Windows' built-in power meter, which works without admin rights or a driver on most PCs.
- CPU temperature comes from the ACPI thermal zone on PCs that report a believable one, which most laptops do. It's approximate, and the bar's tooltip says so. Desktops usually report a fixed dummy value, which is ignored.
Hover over the bar to see what's missing if the temperature shows --°C.
The FPS counter, its lows, frame times and latency, game detection, the top network app, and drive and RAM temperatures also need administrator rights. The gaming stats come from Windows' graphics event tracing, the same data PresentMon uses.
While Base FPS or render latency is shown, games with NVIDIA Reflex measure their own latency a few times a second, as they do with NVIDIA FrameView.
- Windows 10 / 11 (64-bit)
- .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later (already included in Windows 10 and 11)
- An up-to-date graphics driver for GPU stats. NVIDIA cards are read through the driver's
nvml.dll, and AMD / Intel cards through LibreHardwareMonitor. Neither needs admin rights.
On PCs with more than one GPU (for example, a desktop card plus the processor's built-in graphics), go to Settings → Stats → Graphics card. Auto picks the NVIDIA card if there is one, and otherwise the card with the most video memory.
- Some stats aren't available on every GPU. Integrated graphics often don't report temperature, power, clock or fan speed.
- GPU fan speed shows 0% when the card's fans have stopped at idle, which many cards do.
- Batteries of devices on proprietary USB dongles (Razer HyperSpeed, Logitech Lightspeed, SteelSeries, etc.) are only visible to their vendor apps, so they aren't shown. The same devices connected over Bluetooth do work.
- The widget's "On the desktop" placement keeps it behind your windows, but Windows' Show desktop (Win+D) may hide it. If it does, choose Always on top instead.
- The game overlay can't appear over games in exclusive fullscreen. Use borderless or windowed mode.
- The FPS counter measures the app in front, so it shows
--on the desktop or in apps that aren't drawing new frames. Browsers draw in a separate process, so they show--too. - Base FPS and render latency need a game with NVIDIA Reflex. Other games show
--for them. - Showing the overlay automatically, session summaries and moving to the game's monitor recognise games that fill their screen (fullscreen or borderless), not windowed ones.
- The public IP stat asks api.ipify.org for your address every 5 minutes while it's shown. It's off unless you switch it on.
- Ping uses ICMP, which some networks and servers block. If it always shows the warning colour, try another address such as
8.8.8.8.
- Game overlay: base FPS before frame generation, 1% and 0.1% lows, a frame-time graph and render latency. It can show itself in games, move to the game's monitor and close with the game.
- Session summaries when a game closes, and benchmark recording to CSV with Ctrl+Shift+F11.
- Notifications for a hot CPU or GPU, low batteries, a full drive and high ping.
- Hover graphs on the bar with the top processes, and the bar on every monitor's taskbar.
- 14 new stats: GPU hot spot and memory temperature, drive and RAM temperature, top network app, VPN status, public IP, time and date, plus the gaming stats above.
- Profiles, backup and restore, and updates that install themselves after checking the download's checksum.
- The download is now
Kinetik.zip, withKinetik.exeand alibfolder. The LibreHardwareMonitor DLLs are no longer packed inside the exe, a pattern antivirus software is wary of. - Each DLL in
libis checked against the version Kinetik was built with before it loads.
- New game overlay: a slim, always-on-top strip of stats for gaming, with its own contents, text labels or icons, click-through lock, and a Ctrl+Shift+F10 hotkey.
- New FPS counter for DirectX, OpenGL and Vulkan games, on the overlay, the bar or the widget (needs admin).
- Fixed CPU power and temperature missing on some laptops: they now fall back to Windows' own power meter and ACPI thermal zones, and Settings says when the PawnIO driver is missing.
- Fixed the widget's Background colour setting being cut off in Settings.
- Elevated startup now runs a protected copy in
C:\Program Files\Kinetik, so other programs can't swap the exe to gain admin rights. Run Kinetik once as administrator after updating to move an existing startup entry over. - Native DLLs and helper programs load only from System32, and startup tasks are registered through the Task Scheduler API rather than a temporary file.
- New Check for updates button in Settings → About.
- New name: PC Stats Bar is now Kinetik, with a new logo. Your settings are carried over automatically the first time Kinetik runs. If you had Run at startup on, start Kinetik once as administrator (right-click → Restart as administrator) so it can replace the old startup entry.
- Animated icons on the bar and the widget: fans spin with fan speed, arrows stream with throughput, thermometers fill up, bolts crackle, gauges swing and more, all driven by live readings. Turn them on or off separately for the bar and the widget, and pick 15, 30 or 60 fps.
- Tray icon: the fan logo spins faster the busier your CPU is (can be turned off), and you can pick from 11 backgrounds. Optional taskbar button and desktop shortcut.
- Fullscreen hiding is now per monitor: a fullscreen game only hides the bar or widget on its own screen.
- New: tray icon. PC Stats Bar now has an icon in the system tray, next to the clock.
- Click it to open Settings
- Right-click it for the same menu as the bar, so the menu is still reachable when the bar is hidden (for example by a fullscreen app)
- Hover over it for a quick CPU / RAM / GPU summary
- Turn it off in Settings → General → Show tray icon
- Windows 11 puts new tray icons under the ^ arrow at first. Drag it onto the taskbar to keep it visible.
- New: desktop widget. A floating panel for your desktop, like LibreHardwareMonitor's gadget but more polished. Turn it on from the bar's right-click menu (Desktop widget) or Settings → Widget.
- Stats are grouped under headings (Processor, Graphics, Memory, Network, Storage, System, Battery) with your CPU and GPU model names
- Each stat has a coloured usage bar and/or a scrolling history graph, and CPU cores get a per-thread bar chart
- Four styles: Bars, Graphs, Bars and graphs, Minimal
- Dark, light or match-Windows theme, with custom background colour, opacity, size, width, corner roundness, shadow and an optional title
- Place it on the desktop behind your windows, as a normal window, or always on top
- Drag it anywhere. It snaps to screen edges and remembers its position, and can be locked or made click-through.
- Has its own list of stats and order (drag to rearrange, with dividers), while sharing icons, colours and warning limits with the bar
- Graph history of 30 seconds to 5 minutes
- Stats are measured only when the bar or the widget shows them, so the widget costs nothing while it's off.
- Run at startup no longer uses PowerShell. The startup task is now created with Windows' built-in
schtaskstool, so antivirus programs (such as Bitdefender) no longer flag it as suspicious. It works the same as before: it starts elevated at sign-in with no UAC prompt, runs on battery, and has no time limit. If you already had Run at startup on, you don't need to change anything.
- PC Stats Bar is now free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (or later). Versions up to and including v1.2.1 were released under the MIT License.
- The About tab shows the new license.
- The license and the exe's company details name Akila Sella Hennedige as the copyright holder.
- New About tab in Settings with the app icon, version number and copyright.
- The version shown at the bottom of the Settings sidebar includes the patch number (e.g. v1.2.0).
Icon and colour picker
- Click any stat's icon on the Arrange page to open a picker with 37 preset icons
- Choose No icon or a short Text label instead of an icon
- Give any single stat, or any divider, its own colour from 15 swatches or a custom colour
Dividers
- Add as many dividers as you want with + Add divider, and remove them with ✕ or the Delete key. v1.0 had three fixed dividers.
- Four styles (line, dotted line, dot, blank space), plus an adjustable height
- Dividers keep a little space either side even at the tightest spacing
Spacing and shape
- Spacing sliders: between stats, between icon and value, edge padding, icon size, and two-line line spacing
- Corner roundness slider for the background pill
- Reset spacing button
A better Arrange page
- Rows follow the mouse when dragged, and the other rows slide out of the way
- Auto-scrolls when you drag near the top or bottom
- Keyboard support: ↑/↓ to select, Alt+↑/↓ to move, Space to switch on/off, Delete to remove a divider
- Show switched-off stats switch, and a Reset order button
11 new stats
- Network: total speed, and ping to an address you choose
- Memory: committed memory %
- GPU: clock speed, fan speed, VRAM usage %
- Storage: disk read speed, disk write speed, free space on any drive
- System: running processes, uptime
- Battery: laptop battery time left
Warning limits
- New General → Warnings section for CPU / RAM / GPU usage, CPU / GPU temperature, low battery, high ping and low disk space
Lower memory use
- Measured side by side with the same settings: memory in use went from about 100 MB to about 15 MB, the app's own memory from 31 MB to 20 MB, and CPU time was roughly halved
- The bar is only redrawn when something has changed, into one reusable image instead of a new one every second
- LibreHardwareMonitor only loads when needed and unloads when idle
- Performance counters, the battery scan and ping only run while their stats are shown
- The network adapter list, installed-font list and fonts are cached
- Unused memory is handed back to Windows after startup and after closing Settings
- Settings are saved once you stop adjusting, instead of on every slider movement
Other
- Arrange stats… shortcut in the right-click menu
- 5-second update interval option
- Version shown in the Settings window
- Settings from v1.0 carry over. Dividers that were switched on are kept, and the rest are removed.
- Taskbar overlay with network, CPU, RAM, GPU, disk and battery stats
- Arrange page with drag-and-drop and ▲ / ▼ buttons, and three dividers
- One or two lines, font picker, colour picker, see-through background
- Light/dark taskbar matching, warning colours, fullscreen hiding, Task Manager on click, run at startup
No Visual Studio or SDK needed. It compiles with the .NET Framework compiler that's built into Windows.
-
Put the LibreHardwareMonitorLib 0.9.6 NuGet package's .NET Framework DLLs (
runtimes/win-x64/lib/net472), along with its dependencies' DLLs, into alib\folder next to the source. The dependencies are DiskInfoToolkit, BlackSharp.Core, HidSharp, RAMSPDToolkit-NDD, System.Memory, System.Buffers, System.Numerics.Vectors, System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe, System.CodeDom, System.Threading.AccessControl, System.Security.AccessControl and System.Security.Principal.Windows. -
Run:
build.bat
This produces
Kinetik.exewith the app icon embedded. It loads the DLLs from thelib\folder next to it, so it runs straight from the source folder.build.bat packagealso makesKinetik.zip(the exe,lib\*.dlland the license) for a release.Kinetik only loads DLLs whose SHA-256 matches the list in
LibHashesinKinetik.cs. If you use different versions of the DLLs, update that list.
Found a bug or want a feature? Open an issue and include your Windows version, CPU/GPU, and a screenshot if possible. Pull requests are welcome too.
Copyright © 2026 Akila Sella Hennedige.
Released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0-or-later). You're free to use, study, modify and share it, including commercially, as long as anything you distribute that's based on it is also released under the GPL with its source code available.
Versions up to and including v1.2.1 were released under the MIT License.
Third-party components bundled in the release exe keep their own licenses. LibreHardwareMonitorLib is licensed under MPL-2.0, and HidSharp under Apache-2.0.