![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/monitor-yaru-250x250.webp\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Want to monitor the usage and\/or temperature of your CPU, GPU, Memory with an indicator applet on panel? Here’s a simple indicator that can do the job in Ubuntu with most desktop environments.<\/p>\n
There are quite a few Gnome Shell Extensions (e.g., Vitals<\/a> and Resource Monitor<\/a>) allow to monitor hardware utilization and temperature within Ubuntu top-bar. But what if you’re not using the default Gnome desktop or you just don’t like extensions?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Indicator System-Monitor<\/p><\/div>\n Try indicator-sysmonitor<\/a>, a very simple and lightweight applet made by David Mohammed, the project lead of Ubuntu Budgie.<\/p>\n It’s quite simple and customizable. It uses few Python scripts to fetch sensor data (only function when needed), and user can choose which one or ones to display, in which order with which description texts and separators.<\/b><\/p>\n By default, it supports monitoring:<\/p>\n For example, you may set customize output to Or set Advanced users can monitor more sensors (such as fan speed, CPU\/GPU frequency) that are NOT available in the preferences<\/b>, by clicking on “New” button and add custom command to report the target sensor data.<\/p>\n In my case I’ve a NVIDIA graphics card running with a proprietary driver. Use the command below will report the fan speed<\/b>, so I added it as If you have a dedicated NVIDIA GPU too, then following commands may help:<\/p>\n The developer has an Ubuntu PPA<\/a> contains the packages for Ubuntu 18.04<\/strong>, Ubuntu 20.04<\/strong>, Ubuntu 22.04<\/strong>, Ubuntu 24.04<\/strong>, and 25.10<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I tested it in Ubuntu 24.04. It works out-of-the-box in the default GNOME Desktop. While, XFCE4 (XUbuntu) needs to first add “Indicator Plugin” applet into panel, and other desktops (e.g., Plasma and Cinnamon) need to move mouse cursor over the indicator applet to show the sensor data.<\/p>\n 1.<\/b> First, press Ctrl+Alt+T<\/b> on keyboard to open a terminal window. When it opens, run command to add the PPA:<\/p>\n Type user password when it asks and hit Enter to continue.<\/i><\/p>\n 2.<\/b> For Linux Mint, you need to manually refresh package index after adding PPA:<\/p>\n 3.<\/b> And, install the indicator applet via command:<\/p>\n NOTE:<\/b> For Ubuntu Budgie, run the command below instead to install the applet:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/indicator-sysmonitor.webp\")
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/indisys-prefs.webp\")
<\/p>\ncpu: {cpu}, mem: {mem}, gpu: {nvgpu}<\/code> to show only CPU, Memory, and Nvidia GPU usage, so it will look like:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/indi-sysmonitor1.webp\")
<\/p>\ncpu: {cpu} | temp: {cputemp}, mem: {mem}, net: {net}<\/code> to show CPU usage and temperature, memory usage and network upload\/download speed, that will look like:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/indi-sysmonitor2.webp\")
<\/p>\n{nvgpufan}<\/code>, and it worked as you see in the top screenshot.<\/p>\nnvidia-smi -q |grep \"Fan Speed\" | cut -f2- -d:<\/pre>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/indi-sysmonitorcustom.webp\")
<\/p>\n\n
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=utilization.memory | awk 'NR==2'<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=clocks.gr | awk \"NR==2\"<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=clocks.video | awk \"NR==2\"<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=clocks.sm | awk 'NR==2'<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n
nvidia-smi --query-gpu=clocks.mem | awk \"NR==2\"<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
How to Install Indicator-Sysmonitor in Ubuntu<\/h3>\n
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fossfreedom\/indicator-sysmonitor<\/pre>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/indicator-sysmonitor-ppa-600x210.webp\")
<\/a><\/p>\nsudo apt update<\/pre>\n
sudo apt install indicator-sysmonitor<\/pre>\n
sudo apt install budgie-sysmonitor-applet<\/pre>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/apt-indicator-sysmonitor-600x217.webp\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/open-indicator-sysmonitor.webp\")
<\/a><\/p>\n