PowerGadget

A lightweight non-overlay power gadget for Windows with a graph-based UI that doesn't suck, inspired by macOS Intel Power Gadget

Intuition

• HWiNFO's graph UI sucks, OCCT's is better but it doesn't 'stack' the frequencies chart
• Based on my understanding, no one has made a (Mac-like) UI for monitoring performance on Windows that is also not an overlay
• So I wanted to make my own because I believe there are no true alternatives to the Intel Power Gadget for macOS (productivity based, dense UI etc)

Structure

• Custom made my own plotting library called CorePlot. Its goal is to faithfully recreate the macOS Power Gadget plots, but it's also quite suitable for other graphing purposes
• The actual monitoring part (backend) of this project is from epinter's LibreHardwareService (Mozilla 2.0), which uploads LibreHardwareMonitor data to shared memory. I read it using the FFM API. Whatever CPUs/GPUs that supports, Power Gadget probably also supports.
• Also custom made my own Windows light/dark mode detector, which is a rewrite of Dansoftowner's jSystemThemeDetector (Apache 2.0) using a newer FFM API and removing the slf4j and compiler annotations for a leaner package. Somehow it works faster than UWP apps
• Also custom made the launcher for the app in a child project

Demo

---

works great in both light and dark mode, and automatically switches the color scheme based on Windows colors

---

How to run

• Grab the latest release, unzip, and double-click the .exe file!
• The app is a portable folder. Install it wherever you want!
• Small memory footprint (~65-85MB), minimal impact on performance (consumes about 10-20MHz effective clock)
• Currently, this works on all x64 Windows 10/11 systems, but support is only tested for Intel IA/GT

Build

• Launcher build command for native-image:

   native-image --no-fallback -0b -jar .\launcher.jar
  

  Note: Using -0b quick build has smaller file size compared to -O3 build. DO NOT use -march=native.

  The launcher's folder is an idea project in itself, made for launching PowerGadget, intended to be compiled AOT.

• Minimal runtime made from openjdk 25.0.2 2026-01-20 LTS (Amazon Corretto, 47.4MB):

   jlink --add-modules java.base,java.desktop --strip-debug --no-man-pages --compress=2 --output runtime
  

• LibreHardwareService.exe backend from epinter: Release v0.3.0

  Note: The .exe is too big to fit in the service folder. It's included in releases, but you have to place it yourself when compiling.

  The backend comes with the MPL 2.0 License, which is included in the source and all forms of distribution (kudos epinter!)

• The launcher reads a powergadget.vmoptions file located in the service folder.

  That file contains info on where to locate javaw.exe and the target JAR, as well as all vmoptions.

  The current build uses ZGC because it has the least footprint (~65MB) and one of the least idle CPU usage (0-0.1%), matching or sometimes exceeding HWiNFO

• Used rcedit-x64.exe to set the icon to this .ico file, which is Intel Power Gadget's logo

• A fat build for the main .jar should work fine on any JDK25, I used GraalVM JDK 25.0.2.

• Currently (since I'm the only one making this), there is no build script. If you would like to contribute, reference the existing build folders or hit me up!

  Uses Intel's Power Gadget logo, Apple's SF Pro font for the UI, epinter's LibreHardwareService, FlatLaf, Jackson, Oracle's GraalVM JDK 25, Amazon's Corretto JRE

  No intention of infringement. If you have any issues, hit me up!

Future direction

• A settings page to adjust plot capacity, plot interval, exclude certain metrics, pin custom values, etc
• Auto-detect nominal TDP/frequency to pin on the graph (as opposed to hard-set 24W/2.0GHz)
• Known issue: Will crash when switching the graphics context (eg. entering remote desktop), which is an AWT issue and is unfixable
• Improve backend support for non-Intel systems with d/eGPUs (currently, an AMD CPU will only show utilization)