NVTOP

Monitor real-time information about your GPU status and running processes with nvtop.

Features

• Uses nvtop to monitor real-time GPU status.
• Supports multiple GPUs.
• View processes using the GPU.
• Process columns: PID, GPU Usage, Video Encoder Usage, Video Decoder Usage, GPU Memory Usage, and Command Line.
• Sort processes by any column by clicking its header.
• Kill a process with SIGINT or terminate it with SIGKILL.
• Copy a process PID or command line to the clipboard.
• Customizable polling interval.
• Customizable colors for the sorted column.
• The plugin launches nvtop when the panel opens and closes it when the panel is closed. This helps save resources.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	tordex/nvtop
Entries	Panel: panel; bar widget: widget

Requirements

The plugin requires nvtop, python3, kill, and pkill to be installed and available in $PATH.

The plugin uses python script to run and collect nvtop output and draw GPU Load and VRAM graphs. You have to install the Pillow module with pip:

pip install Pillow

Usage

Add the NVTOP bar widget in the shell's bar-widget picker and click it to open the plugin panel.

You can also open the panel by binding it in your compositor or by setting the action for sysmon widgets:

[widget.GPU_Usage]
stat = "gpu_usage"
type = "sysmon"

    [widget.GPU_Usage.actions]
    left = "panel-toggle tordex/nvtop:panel gpu"

[widget.GPU_VRAM]
stat = "gpu_vram_used"
type = "sysmon"

    [widget.GPU_VRAM.actions]
    left = "panel-toggle tordex/nvtop:panel mem"

To open the panel from the command line, use:

noctalia msg panel-toggle tordex/nvtop:panel [order_by]

Possible values for order_by:

order_by value	Effect
pid	Sort by Process ID (PID)
gpu	Sort by GPU Usage
enc	Sort by Video Encoder Usage
dec	Sort by Video Decoder Usage
mem	Sort by GPU Memory Usage
cmd	Sort by Process Command Line

Without order_by, the panel opens with the previous sort mode.

Add - before order_by to reverse the sort order. For example:

noctalia msg panel-toggle tordex/nvtop:panel -mem

Note: some GPUs share an encoder/decoder. In this case, the ENC and DEC columns are replaced by a single ENC/DEC column. The order_by values enc and dec still work, and both sort processes by the ENC/DEC column.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
delay	int	5	Refresh rate. 1 == 0.1s. Valid values: 5-20.
sort_column_background	color	surface_variant	Background color for the sorted column.
sort_column_color	color	on_surface_variant	Text color for the sorted column.
process_hover_background	color	surface_variant	Background color for the hovered row.
process_hover_color	color	on_surface_variant	Text color for the hovered row.

Notes

The panel writes some files to the ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR} directory when it is opened:

File name	Description
noctalia_tordex_nvtop_params	The information about selected GPU.
noctalia_tordex_nvtop.json	The information collected from nvtop.
noctalia_tordex_nvtop_gpu_usage.png	Gauge for GPU usage
noctalia_tordex_nvtop_mem_usage.png	Gauge for VRAM usage

PNG files are not deleted on panel close to prevent error messages in the noctalia log. Other files are deleted when the panel closes.