Hiiro
Your hardware at a glance, without a kernel driver
Hiiro is a small widget for the Windows desktop. It shows CPU, GPU, memory, disk, network and battery status, using the same counters as Task Manager.
Free and open source. Windows 10 version 2004 or later, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime.
Why no driver
Most tools that show temperatures and clocks load a kernel driver such as WinRing0 or PawnIO. In March 2025 Windows Defender started flagging WinRing0, and several monitoring tools raised warnings at once.
Hiiro only reads interfaces Windows already exposes to normal programs:
| Value | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| CPU usage and clock | PDH % Processor Utility and % Processor Performance, the counters Task Manager uses |
| GPU usage and memory | PDH GPU Engine and GPU Adapter Memory |
| GPU temperature and clock | D3DKMT, the values the graphics driver reports to Task Manager |
| RAM speed | SMBIOS table |
It stays out of the way
- On laptops with hybrid graphics it does not wake a sleeping discrete GPU just to read its temperature. The card shows Idle instead.
- When a full screen app covers its monitor, sampling drops to once every 5 seconds and drawing stops.
- On battery the update interval doubles.
- In desktop mode it sits on the desktop layer and never covers other windows.
Measured on the author's machine at a 1 second interval. Drawing the interface is not included.
Settings in one window
Pick which cards to show and in what order, then set the language, theme, accent color, opacity, width and update interval. No config files to edit. The interface is in English and Turkish and follows your Windows display language.
What comes next
Hiiro stays free. A one time Pro upgrade may follow with threshold alerts, logging to CSV, more than one widget and optional deep sensors. It will only be built if enough people want it.
Tell me what you would use on GitHub. If Hiiro ever stops being developed, Pro becomes free and the code stays open.