Live system metrics in the VS Code sidebar, styled like the Windows Task Manager Performance tab.
Click the gauge icon in the activity bar to open the System Metrics view.
What it shows
Section
Shown as
Updates
CPU
usage graph, optional per-core bars
every second
Memory
usage graph, used / total
every second
GPU (one section per physical adapter)
utilization graph, dedicated and shared memory bars
every second on Windows, every 10 s elsewhere
Disk
activity graph, used / total bar per drive
activity every second, space every 10 s
Network
download and upload graph
every second
Footer
battery, CPU temperature, uptime
every 10 s
Graphs keep the last 60 samples and follow your color theme. Anything a platform cannot report is shown as N/A.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
systemMetrics.showCores
false
Show a usage bar for each CPU core under the CPU graph.
Platform notes
Windows: GPU utilization works for any vendor and is reported per adapter (integrated and discrete separately). It comes from Windows performance counters, read by one background PowerShell process that runs only while the view is visible. CPU temperature is N/A, because Windows does not expose it without administrator rights or third-party tools.
macOS and Linux: data comes from the systeminformation library. GPU utilization is reported only for NVIDIA cards. Disk activity is N/A.
Non-English Windows: performance counter names are localized, so GPU, disk activity and network may show N/A when the Windows display language is not English.
Resource use and privacy
Collection runs only while the view is visible and stops when you hide or close it. With the view open, the background counter process uses about 0.5% of total CPU on a 16-thread machine. The extension does not send data anywhere and makes no network requests.
