If you’re looking for a system monitor extension for GNOME Shell you’re not short of choices (I’ve covered a few in recent months so you may think I’m obsessed—I’m not, I promise).
But I couldn’t not write about this one, called Astra Monitor. Having tried it out and seen what it does (and does so well, I might add) I knew plenty of you reading this would love it.
Compared to some system monitoring extensions I’ve shown you before, which have favoured simplicity, this one sits at the opposite end of the stat-monitoring scene.
Let’s take a look.
Astra Monitor is All-Frills
To quote the project’s Github: “Astra Monitor is a cutting-edge, fully customizable, and performance-focused monitoring extension for GNOME’s top bar. It’s an all-in-one solution for those seeking to keep a close eye on their system’s performance metrics.”
If I had to describe it in one word it’d be comprehensive.
As others do, Astra Monitor puts icons and small graphs in the top bar for the following resources:
- CPU
- Memory (including Swap)
- Storage
- Network
You can show/hide, reorder, and modify the look and behaviour of each elements, including adjusting update frequency, showing percentage text, history graphs, real time bars, and so on.
Additionally, you can add a sensors item to relay your CPU, GPU, or even SSD temp (where the latter is supported).
Making high-level trends for core system vitals glanceable means it’s easy what your system is up to regardless of what you are up to. You don’t need to open the app launcher to find an app, or switch to a Terminal to run the top command.
Click on a hardware item in the top bar (e.g., CPU, RAM, HDD) to access an individual menu stuffed with comprehensive stats pertinent to that resource.
For example, viewing the RAM breakdown memory usage by type, lists the most memory-hungry processes, and shows an overview of swap usage.
But it gets even better, as this GIF shows: –
As you can see, when you mouse over some elements in each drop-down menu a fly-out menu appears with even more information. This really helps zone in on specific detail, still without needing to open a system app or run a command-line tool.
Nifty, time-saving stuff.
The best feature? It’s lightweight!
Despite Astra Monitor GNOME Shell extension being stacked — stat-cked? — with detail, its developer describes it as “lightweight and efficient”, as it’s optimised for performance. Resources are only queried as and when needed, no incessant polling, etc.
Another aspect to Astra Monitor is that it doesn’t use gtop, which is what most system monitoring tools in GNOME use. Instead, the developer created a custom implementation that, they say, is “close to kernel level such as /proc”.
I.e., faster and more efficient.
Additional features are on the way including optional gtop support for those who want it, history graph settings, more personalisation options (e.g., change icons and graph colours), GPU reporting, dual-socket CPU support, and more nuanced network monitoring.
GNOME Shell extensions update automatically in the background too, so once you install Astra Monitor you’ll get all of those new features without needing to do anything.
Install Astra Monitor
Astra Monitor is currently alpha-quality software (at the time I write this). If you install it keep that in mind (i.e. don’t get annoyed if a feature doesn’t work, look right, acts up, etc).
You can get the the alpha of Astra Monitor from the GNOME Extensions. It’s compatible with GNOME 45 and later so you need to be on Ubuntu 23.10 or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.
For sensor reporting you need to install the lm-sensors package from the Ubuntu repos.
In all, Astra Monitor is out of this world. If you’re developing, debugging, or just deeply curious about system activity it’s well-worth trying out — if looking at this makes you go “oooh!!” rather than “uhh??” that is (some people don’t ‘get’ the point of system monitoring add-ons).
Let me know what you think of Astra Monitor down in the comments.