Display CPU / Memory / Network Usage in Ubuntu 18.04 Panel

Last updated: March 15, 2019

gnome shell

Want to monitor Ubuntu system resources usage momentarily? There’s a gnome extension allows to display CPU usage, Memory usage, network speed, disk, GPU, and battery informations in Ubuntu 18.04 Gnome status bar.

The system monitor extension features:

  • Display informations for CPU, GPU, Memory, Swap, Net, Disk, Fan, Battery
  • Display resource usage in panel via digit or graph
  • A drop-down menu with detailed information.
  • Ability to set gragh width, background color, refresh time.
  • Show tooltips.

1. To install the extension, first open terminal either via Ctrl+Alt+T keyboard shortcut or by searching for ‘terminal’ from application menu.

When it opens, run command to install the necessary system libraries:

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-gtop-2.0 gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0  gir1.2-clutter-1.0

Type user password (no asterisk feedback due to security reason) when it prompts and hit Enter.

2. Open Ubuntu Software and then search for ‘system monitor extension’.

There are a few similar extensions available. In the case, I installed the last one.

3. You’ll see the indicator applet once you installed the extension. Click to show drop-down menu, then go to Preferences and change the applet appearance.

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11 responses to Display CPU / Memory / Network Usage in Ubuntu 18.04 Panel

  1. Thank you! I’ve been looking for this!

  2. Thank You! very helpful!

  3. Dénis da Mata June 21, 2019 at 9:12 pm

    “indicator-multiload” does not appear on the top bar of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS but this appeared more correctly.

    Nice!

  4. Nice! Thanks

  5. You are awesome! Thanks for the help/

  6. Thank you, this avoids all the crash/login problems caused by the current indicator-multiload (hint: if you have installed it and login fails then just delete ~/.config/autostart/indicator-multiload !).
    In my case, everything worked fine WITHOUT gir1.2-networkmanager-1.0 – the two other packages were already installed, possibly by earlier actions).

  7. link is not working

  8. This command worked for me
    sudo apt-get install gir1.2-gtop-2.0 gir1.2-nm-1.0:i386 gir1.2-nm-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0

  9. Thank you so much. Beautiful work!

  10. I have been using Ubuntu 16.04 since its inception until today, even though I installed 18.04 on a laptop already but I had to remove it for some serious driver problems. When I read there was a compatibility problem between on Gnome for the Unity indicator set I felt dizzy as I’m addicted to it. So, to find your blog giving hints on how to replace these on gnome has been a relief. Thanks a lot and keep up the good job.

  11. Thank you! For Zorin OS 16 (based on Ubuntu), I couldn’t see it in my Software app, but I did install the extension at https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/120/system-monitor/