bottom

There are many facets to monitoring one's computer, and there is certainly no shortage of solutions when looking for software for that task. Software in the form of widgets to help users track information about their system in real-time also exists.

One such program is called bottom, and it features real-time information about your system: whether it is your memory and CPU usage, your machine's temperatures, or your opened processes, you can monitor them all here in this Command Prompt-like application.

While there usually isn't much to talk about widgets, this one is a bit different in that regard. The Command Prompt-looking interface gives it a legacy-like aspect, and the fact that everything is structured so nicely makes everything better. What's more, this is a cross-platform program, which means that it will work on Linux, macOS, and Windows machines without fault.

As for the monitoring, users can check their CPU usage — either of the entire processor, of a specific core, or its average — and there's also a Memory section that details the RAM use. The program will also look for any sensor temperature readings it can find, allowing you to see the thermals of your computer.

You can also monitor your drives and network adapters through the app. Information such as the read/write speed of your disks, plus their storage quota, is all readily available here. As for Network, your connection's received and transferred packet numbers are summarily displayed.

Selecting a section then pressing the E key will maximize it, and for processes, in-depth information about them will be revealed. You can use this program as a Task Manager of sorts if you want — input the / key and start a process search, look through what's eating most of your resources, and so on.

bottom is an interesting program: it's open-source, cross-platform, and simply works as intended. It also looks really cool.