librehardwaremonitor/librehardwaremonitor — explained in plain English
Analysis updated 2026-06-24
Build a C# desktop application that displays live CPU and GPU temperatures in a custom overlay or dashboard.
Add hardware sensor monitoring to a home server management tool using the LibreHardwareMonitorLib NuGet package.
Check your PC's temperatures and fan speeds in real time using the desktop app to diagnose overheating issues.
Create a script that logs hardware sensor values to a file over time to track thermal performance during stress tests.
| librehardwaremonitor/librehardwaremonitor | gibbed/steamachievementmanager | technitiumsoftware/dnsserver | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 8,337 | 8,316 | 8,381 |
| Language | C# | C# | C# |
| Setup difficulty | easy | easy | easy |
| Complexity | 2/5 | 2/5 | 3/5 |
| Audience | developer | general | ops devops |
Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.
Some sensors require administrator privileges on Windows, run as admin if readings appear incomplete.
Libre Hardware Monitor is a free, open-source Windows application that reads live data from the physical components inside your computer and displays it on screen. It shows temperatures from processors and graphics cards, fan rotation speeds, voltages, current load percentages, and clock speeds for CPUs and GPUs. This lets you see at a glance whether your computer is running hot, how hard it is working, and whether cooling fans are spinning at expected rates. It can pull readings from a wide range of hardware: Intel and AMD processors, NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel graphics cards, hard drives of various types (spinning disks, solid-state drives, and NVMe drives), motherboards, and network cards. Because different motherboard manufacturers expose sensor data in different ways, the project actively relies on user contributions to improve accuracy for specific hardware combinations. The project ships two things. The first is a desktop application with a graphical interface that any Windows user can download and run. The second is a library called LibreHardwareMonitorLib, which developers can add to their own C# applications via NuGet (a standard package manager for .NET) to read hardware sensor data programmatically. A short code sample in the README shows how to open a connection, walk through detected hardware, and print sensor values. Some sensors require the application to run with administrator rights, because Windows restricts low-level hardware access. The README notes a warning: there is an unaffiliated website using a similar name, and users should avoid it. The software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, which allows free use and modification while requiring that changes to the library itself remain open source.
Libre Hardware Monitor is a free Windows app and .NET library that reads live temperatures, fan speeds, voltages, and CPU/GPU load from your computer's hardware sensors and displays them in real time.
Mainly C#. The stack also includes C#, .NET, NuGet.
Free to use and modify, but any changes you make to the library source code must be shared under the same Mozilla Public License.
Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.
Mainly developer.
This repo across BitVibe Labs
Verify against the repo before relying on details.