Conky – configurable system monitor

Conky is a highly configurable system monitor that displays information directly on the desktop, in its own window, or through non-graphical output.

Originally based on Torsmo, Conky has developed into a versatile monitoring application with extensive customisation capabilities. Rather than providing a fixed dashboard, it allows users to select the information they want to see and determine precisely how it should appear.

Conky is particularly attractive to users who want system statistics permanently visible on their desktop. It can display information about running processes and resource consumption, making it useful for identifying demanding workloads without repeatedly opening a separate monitoring application.

Its configuration system supports everything from simple text-based displays to elaborate desktop widgets with custom graphics. Conky also supports X11 and Wayland, although some graphical functionality depends on the desktop compositor.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• More than 300 built-in objects for displaying system information.
• Monitors CPU utilisation, memory consumption, swap usage and system uptime.
• Displays processes ranked by CPU or memory usage, with top-like statistics.
• Tracks network activity, including upload and download speeds.
• Shows filesystem usage, disk activity and storage statistics.
• Displays hardware sensor readings, including temperatures and fan speeds where available.
• Provides optional NVIDIA GPU monitoring through NVML, including utilisation, temperature, clocks, memory and power consumption.
• Displays system information using text, progress bars, gauges and graphs.
• Supports custom fonts, colours, alignment and graphical layouts.
• Offers transparent windows and configurable desktop widget placement.
• Supports X11 and Wayland graphical backends with automatic display-session detection.
• Provides configurable update intervals and monitoring behaviour.
• Built-in IMAP and POP3 email monitoring.
• Displays information from music players including MPD, XMMS2 and Audacious.
• Supports external commands and scripts for gathering additional information.
• Extensible through Lua scripting with Cairo and Imlib2 drawing capabilities.
• Supports mouse events for interactive desktop widgets.
• Can output monitoring information to the console, files or HTTP.
• Supports custom configuration files for different monitoring layouts.
• Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFlyBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and Haiku.

Website: github.com/brndnmtthws/conky
Support:
Developer: Conky Developers
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Conky is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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