NVIDIA GPU Scope
NVIDIA GPU Scope is a lightweight NVIDIA GPU monitor for Visual Studio Code. It displays local or remote NVIDIA GPU metrics in a compact sidebar dashboard and status-bar tooltip.
NVIDIA GPU Scope is an independent community extension and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA Corporation.
Features
- Live GPU utilization with recent-history chart
- VRAM used, total capacity, and usage percentage
- GPU temperature
- Current power draw and configured power limit, such as
10W/250W
- Multiple GPUs displayed simultaneously
- Pin any GPU to the top of the dashboard
- Compact
GPU Scope status-bar entry
- Compact status-bar hover showing only utilization and VRAM usage
- Works as a workspace extension in Remote SSH, WSL, and Dev Containers
- No telemetry or external network requests
Requirements
The extension reads metrics through NVIDIA's nvidia-smi command. It must be available in the environment where the VS Code extension host runs.
Verify the command before installation:
nvidia-smi
For a remote VS Code window, run the command in that remote environment. If nvidia-smi is installed at a non-standard location, configure gpuScope.nvidiaSmiPath.
Installation
From a VSIX file
- Download the latest
.vsix package from the repository's Releases page.
- In VS Code, open the Extensions view.
- Select Views and More Actions (...) and choose Install from VSIX....
- Reload VS Code if prompted.
Development build
npm ci
npm run check
npm run vsix
The generated package is written to the repository root.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
Description |
gpuScope.refreshInterval |
1000 |
Polling interval in milliseconds |
gpuScope.nvidiaSmiPath |
nvidia-smi |
Path to the nvidia-smi executable |
gpuScope.historyLength |
60 |
Maximum number of utilization samples retained in memory |
Commands
NVIDIA GPU Scope: Open DashboardNVIDIA GPU Scope: RefreshNVIDIA GPU Scope: Start MonitoringNVIDIA GPU Scope: Stop Monitoring
Development
npm ci
npm run check
npm run compile
Open the project in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.
Project layout:
src/ Extension host and GPU provider code
media/ Sidebar JavaScript, CSS, and activity-bar icon
images/ Marketplace extension icon
out/ Generated JavaScript (not committed)
Repository maintainers can follow PUBLISHING.md for the GitHub and Marketplace release checklist.
Limitations
- Only NVIDIA GPUs supported by
nvidia-smi are detected.
- On some Windows/WDDM systems,
nvidia-smi cannot expose compute-process information. All other available metrics continue to update.
- Metric availability varies by GPU model, driver, and operating mode; unavailable values are shown as
N/A.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
