Windows’ Task Manager provides everything you need for a report on your computer’s overall status and its main components. Then there are specialized tools like Process Explorer that help you better understand the state of processes, but if you want a dedicated alternative for monitoring your PC’s resources, you should take a closer look at Bottom, an open-source option with a classic interface that works directly on the Windows console.
What more could we ask of a PC resource monitor? The main market options are stable and free, present advanced real-time information, are flexible, allow modifications and the use of plugins, receive frequent updates, and do not behave like bloatware. If we add all that up, it’s almost impossible to go wrong when choosing a monitor, but recently I came across Bottom, a development by Clement Tsang. What’s different about it...? Better I show you.
Bottom: A compact resource monitor with a classic interface
First, Bottom reports all the information about our system in a total of seven widgets: processor, memory, network activity, temperature, disk drives, active processes, and battery (when we use laptops). The fact that we don’t have to jump between tabs is much more comfortable, but the story doesn’t end there: Bottom manages to present all this information from the Windows console, without advanced graphics.
To learn more about a widget, all you need is to select it with the mouse and press the letter “e” so it fills the screen. The + and - keys control zoom, while = returns it to its original state. The Esc key takes us back to the main screen, and I must admit it looks very good when we maximize the window on a secondary screen.
Each widget has its own key bindings, and all of them are identified in Bottom’s documentation, but the most important thing to highlight here is the so-called Basic Mode (activated by applying the --basic modifier), which replaces widgets with lists, prioritizing processes. If you ever used htop on Linux, you’ll see that Bottom’s Basic Mode is basically a clone.
Bottom is an open-source resource monitor, and it’s available on a wide number of platforms. Windows users can download its installer, take advantage of one of the portable editions, or follow the path of winget and Chocolatey. The only technical detail on Windows is that it doesn’t create shortcuts, and you’ll have to go look for its executable directly. Download a copy!
Official site and downloads: Click here
