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What is librehardwaremonitor?

librehardwaremonitor/librehardwaremonitor — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

8,337C#Audience · developerComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · easy

In one sentence

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.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    What it does
      Hardware monitoring
      Live sensor data
    Sensors Read
      CPU temperature
      GPU temperature
      Fan speeds
      Voltages and clocks
    Hardware Supported
      Intel and AMD CPUs
      Nvidia and AMD GPUs
      Hard drives
      Motherboards
    Usage
      Desktop app
      NuGet library
      C# code API
    Requirements
      Windows only
      Admin rights optional
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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Build a C# desktop application that displays live CPU and GPU temperatures in a custom overlay or dashboard.

USE CASE 2

Add hardware sensor monitoring to a home server management tool using the LibreHardwareMonitorLib NuGet package.

USE CASE 3

Check your PC's temperatures and fan speeds in real time using the desktop app to diagnose overheating issues.

USE CASE 4

Create a script that logs hardware sensor values to a file over time to track thermal performance during stress tests.

What is it built with?

C#.NETNuGet

How does it compare?

librehardwaremonitor/librehardwaremonitorgibbed/steamachievementmanagertechnitiumsoftware/dnsserver
Stars8,3378,3168,381
LanguageC#C#C#
Setup difficultyeasyeasyeasy
Complexity2/52/53/5
Audiencedevelopergeneralops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

Some sensors require administrator privileges on Windows, run as admin if readings appear incomplete.

Free to use and modify, but any changes you make to the library source code must be shared under the same Mozilla Public License.

So what is it?

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.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Using the LibreHardwareMonitorLib NuGet package in C#, show me how to open a computer connection, iterate through all hardware components, and print the name and current value of every temperature sensor.
Prompt 2
I want to build a C# WinForms app that shows a live graph of CPU temperature using LibreHardwareMonitor. Walk me through adding the NuGet package, reading the sensor value, and updating a chart control every second.
Prompt 3
How do I use Libre Hardware Monitor to log GPU temperature to a CSV file every 5 seconds using a C# console app? Show me the full code including the polling loop.
Prompt 4
Libre Hardware Monitor requires admin rights for some sensors. Explain which sensors need it and how to request elevated permissions in a C# application so all readings are always available.

Frequently asked questions

What is librehardwaremonitor?

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.

What language is librehardwaremonitor written in?

Mainly C#. The stack also includes C#, .NET, NuGet.

What license does librehardwaremonitor use?

Free to use and modify, but any changes you make to the library source code must be shared under the same Mozilla Public License.

How hard is librehardwaremonitor to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated easy, with roughly 5min to a first successful run.

Who is librehardwaremonitor for?

Mainly developer.

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