Ubuntu show CPU and Memory usages in Top Bar

Ubuntu includes many commands and applications to monitor and track the usage of system resources. However, they display information at the command prompt or in their Windows. If you want to collect system information for reporting and monitoring purposes, these utilities are fine and do their job perfectly. However, if you need real-time information for troubleshooting, you can use the indicator-multiload application.

The indicator-multiload application provides real-time information about resources. It displays information on the top bar as a notification. The following table lists the differences between regular system monitoring tools and this tool.

Installing indicator-multiload application

Installation of the indicator-multiload application is simple. It requires only one command. Connect the system to the Internet, open a terminal, and run the following command.

$sudo apt install indicator-multiload

Authenticate the installation process with your login password.

Starting application

Click Dash (Application launcher) and search system Load Indicator in the search box. From the search results, click the System Load Indicator application.

By default, this application shows information in graph format.

Right-click the notification panel to view the detailed information in text format.

Customizing application

To customize it, click Preferences from the right-click menu.

It brings the main window of the application. The main window contains three sections: Monitored resources, Options, and Colors.

Monitored resources

This section allows you to select the resources you want to monitor. By default, it only monitors CPU usage. If you need to monitor other resources, you can add them here.

Options

This section contains three options: Auto start, System monitor width, and System monitor update interval.

Auto start

If we turn on this option, the application automatically starts when Ubuntu starts.

System monitor width

This option allows us to adjust the width of the notification panel in the top bar.

System monitor update interval

This option allows us to adjust the time interval between two continuous updates.

Colors

This section has two options: Built-in schemes and Color palettes.

Built-in schemes

This option allows us to select the color scheme for the notification panel from some pre-customized color schemes.

Color palette

This option allows us to change the color of a single indicator or all indicators individually in the selected color scheme.

At the bottom of the main window, there are three buttons: Advanced, Menu items, and Indicator items.

Advanced

This option allows us to customize the graph indicators. It divides options into two panes. The left pane contains a list of all resources you can monitor by this application. The right pane displays the options you can customize for selected resources in the left pane. To monitor a resource in graph format, select it from the left pane and toggle the visible button to ON in the Graph section of the right pane. By default, the application enables it for all resources.

If you want to monitor resources for troubleshooting purposes, use the text format instead of the graph format. It provides information descriptively.

Menu items

This option allows us to customize the menu opened when we click the notification panel. This window also divides options into two panes. The left pane shows a list of currently monitored resources by this application. The right pane contains five control buttons: Add, Remove, Edit, Up, and Down.

By default, this application only monitors usages of CPU, Memory, Network (bandwidth), Swap, Load, and Disk (read/write speed). If you want to monitor a additional resource, add that through the Add button.

If you do not want to monitor a resource anymore, select that resource from the left pane and click the Remove button. The Edit button allows us to add any additional functionality or remove current functionality from monitoring for a resource. For example, by default, this application tracks the downloading and uploading speed of the network. If we want to track only the downloading speed, we can remove uploading speed from monitoring. For this, select network indicator [Net:down$(speed(net.down)),up$(speed(net.up))] from the left pane and click Edit and remove the command which tracks uploading speed [up$(speed(net.up))].

The Up/Down buttons allow us to adjust the order of indicators. For example, if we want to display the Memory usage before the CPU usage, we can do that through these buttons. Select the Memory indicator from the left pane and click the Up button. It will put the Memory indicator above the CPU indicator.

Whatever changes we make in this window, applies in the right-click menu box.

Indicator items

Like the previous two buttons, this button also opens a new window. This window looks like previous windows except for the first line of the left pane. By default, in this window, the first line of the left pane is blank. The first line of left pane represents the notification panel. Whatever indicator we put in the first line shows its output in the notification panel.

To view the text notification of any indicator in the notification panel, select that indicator and click the Up button to move that to the first line. For example, to view the current CPU usage in the top bar as a notification, select CPU indicator [(CPU $(percent(cpu.inuse))] in the left pane and click the Up button.

We can also put multiple indicators in the first line. For example, to view the current CPU and Memory usage in the top bar as a notification, select the first line, click the Edit button, and insert the Memory indicator just after the CPU indicator.

After adding the necessary indicators, click the Close button twice (first to close the child window and second to close the main window) to apply the changes.

Uninstalling application

The following command uninstalls this application.

$sudo apt-get remove indicator-multiload

Authenticate the remove active by typing your login password.

Conclusion

As a system or network administrator, you monitor the system resources for debugging and troubleshooting. In this tutorial, I explained how you can view the usage of system resources in real-time.