System monitor for WindowsLives in the tray100% on device
What's eating your PC, in plain English.
Your fan is spinning up and you have no idea why. Pulsr keeps your PC's vitals (CPU, memory, network, disk, battery) live in your system tray, then answers the actual question in a sentence: "Google Chrome is using the most memory right now: 2.1 GB across 28 processes." Bring that app forward or ask it to close, right from the list. Everything measured on your PC. Nothing is ever uploaded.
v1.0.1 beta · Windows 10 (1809+) & 11 · 64-bit · Installs without admin rights · No account
01 How it works
Glance. Click. Fix it.
Glance at the tray
Windows gives an app one small square, not a wide strip, so Pulsr's tray glyph carries whichever metric you put first (as two big digits over a level bar, or a rolling sparkline), and the tooltip carries the rest.
Click for the full picture
A popover tucks into the corner of your screen nearest the notification area with a card for every metric: CPU load and cores, memory and swap, network up and down, free disk space, and battery level with its real health.
Read the plain-English answer
Right under the cards, one sentence names the app that's actually responsible (by memory or by CPU, your choice), followed by a ranked list of everything else.
Do something about it
Bring the offending app forward to deal with it, or ask it to close, right from its row. Click anywhere outside the popover or press Esc and it puts itself away.
02 Features
A system monitor that answers the question.
Windows already ships Task Manager. Almost nobody keeps it open, because a table of processes doesn't tell you what to do. Pulsr does, from a single square in your tray.
"What's using your PC," in plain English
The biggest hog gets called out in a sentence you don't have to decode: "Google Chrome is using the most memory right now: 2.1 GB across 28 processes." Processes are grouped per app, not scattered across dozens of PID rows.
The headline
Act on it without leaving
Every app in the ranked list has two buttons: bring it forward, or ask it to close. Closing sends a normal
Polite, not forceful
WM_CLOSE to every top-level window the app owns (the same request its own X button sends), so it can still prompt you to save. Nothing is ever killed outright unless there's no window to ask at all.One small square, used well
Windows hands a tray app a single icon, not a wide strip, so Pulsr draws whichever metric you care about most as two big digits over a level bar, or a live sparkline, and lets the tooltip carry the rest. Text or Graph style, your call.
Tray-native
Readable process names
Chrome's thirty background processes collapse onto one row labelled "Google Chrome", read straight from the executable's own version resource, the exact string Task Manager itself shows, using the file's own codepage so non-English builds are named properly too.
Grouped by app
Battery health, honestly
Cycle count and full-charge capacity come from Windows' own WMI battery classes. Plenty of OEMs leave those fields empty. A laptop that reports nothing says "no health info" rather than showing a made-up number. On a desktop with no battery, the card simply doesn't appear.
WMI · honest
Network, up and down
Live throughput in both directions on one sparkline (download solid, upload dashed, so hue is never the only thing telling them apart) with running session totals underneath. Handy for catching the backup or update that quietly started saturating your connection.
Session totals
Memory, with swap called out
Used against your real installed total, with swap surfaced the moment your PC starts leaning on it: the pair that actually tells you whether you're low on RAM or genuinely under pressure, not just a single percentage.
Swap-aware
Disk before it bites you
Free space against total on your system drive, so "almost out of disk space" arrives as a warning rather than a failed save.
Light, Dark, or follow Windows
The popover follows your chosen appearance, including its own window chrome, and the tray glyph separately follows your taskbar's theme, which Windows treats as its own setting rather than tying it to the app theme.
Start with Windows
A per-user setting: no admin rights, no service. The installer's startup checkbox and the in-app "Open at login" switch write the exact same registry value, so the two can never quietly disagree with each other.
Updates itself
Pulsr checks periodically and, when a new version is out, downloads the installer, verifies its signature and version match what was advertised, installs over itself and reopens. You can turn the automatic check off; a manual check is always one click away.
Self-updating
100% on your PC
Every reading is taken locally with psutil. Nothing about your system, your apps, or your activity ever leaves the machine: no account, no cloud, no usage analytics. The only network calls are the optional license check and update check.
Privacy
13 languages
English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese and Korean. Pulsr follows your Windows display language automatically, or you can pin one in Settings.
Localized
Built for everyone
Fully keyboard-driven with a visible focus ring, arrow-key navigation on every segmented control, focus captured and returned on every dialog, and live status changes announced (deliberately not the raw numbers, which would otherwise read out loud twice a second). Windows High Contrast honoured, reduced motion respected, and contrast measured by the test suite rather than eyeballed.
WCAG 2.1 AA
03 What it watches
CPU load & cores
Memory & swap
Network up & down
Disk space
Battery level
Battery health
Top apps by memory
Top apps by CPU
04 Beta
You're testing the first Windows build.
Pulsr has been on the Mac for a while. This is the Windows port's first public build: same reveal, same guarantees, rebuilt on Windows APIs.
What would help most
Numbers against hardware you know
Open Task Manager side by side with Pulsr and compare CPU, memory and battery readings, especially on laptops with efficiency cores, unusual batteries, or anything Windows reports oddly. Accuracy across different hardware is the thing a beta on one developer's PC can't catch alone.
The tray icon itself
Legible at your display's DPI scaling, correct in light and dark taskbars, tooltip text that actually matches what's on screen.
Closing an app for real
Whether "ask to close" behaves politely on the apps you actually run: does it prompt to save, does it actually close, does anything hang.
The install itself
Whether SmartScreen let you through, whether the tray icon and taskbar icon look right, whether uninstall leaves anything behind.
06 Pricing
Free. For everyone.
Pulsr is free for everyone, at home and at work. No license, no account, no nag screens, no watermarks, ever.
Personal
Free forever
For individuals and personal projects
- The full app, every feature
- No account, no nag screens
- Free updates forever
At work
Free commercial too
No license, no subscription
- Everything in Personal
- Use it commercially at work, free
- No license to buy, ever
- Free updates forever
Pulsr is free for everyone, including commercial use at work. There is no license to buy and no subscription. The same app runs on the Mac and Windows builds.
07 Download & install
Get set up in about a minute.
Run the installer and Pulsr lands in your own user folder: no admin password, no UAC prompt, nothing else to install.
Version 1.0.1 beta · Pulsr-Setup.exe · about 16 MB · Free updates forever
Windows 10 (version 1809 or later) or Windows 11 · 64-bit
Everything Pulsr needs is inside the installer: no Python, no runtime to chase down. It does use the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime to draw its popover, which ships with Windows 11 and reaches almost every Windows 10 machine through Windows Update. On the rare PC without it, Pulsr will say so on launch and Microsoft's free installer is a one-click fix.
No admin rights needed
Pulsr installs per-user into
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Pulsr, so there's no UAC prompt and no argument with your IT department. Uninstall from Settings → Apps → Installed apps like anything else.Windows may warn you the first time. Here's the honest story.
Pulsr is Authenticode-signed, so the publisher shows as a real, verified name rather than "Unknown publisher." But signing alone does not switch SmartScreen off: Microsoft builds reputation per file, and a brand-new build starts with none. Until this exact file has been downloaded enough times, you may still see a blue "Windows protected your PC" box.
- Click More info
- Check the publisher name shown
- Click Run anyway
08 FAQ
Common questions.
Is Pulsr really free?
Personal use is free forever: every metric, the full ranked process list, no account, no trial timer, no nag screens. It is free for commercial use at work too, with no license to buy and no account.
What actually shows up in my tray?
Whichever metric you put first, drawn as two big digits over a level bar (Text style) or a rolling sparkline (Graph style). Windows only gives a tray app one small square, unlike the wider strip macOS hands out, so the rest of your chosen metrics ride in the tooltip instead of sitting beside the glyph.
Does Pulsr send anything anywhere?
No. Every reading is taken locally on your PC with psutil, and nothing about your system, your apps, or your activity ever leaves the machine. There is no account and no usage analytics. The only time Pulsr contacts our server is to check for updates, which sends the app version.
How is this different from Task Manager?
Task Manager is a table you have to go open, read, and interpret. Pulsr lives in your tray and answers the question in a sentence: "Google Chrome is using the most memory right now: 2.1 GB across 28 processes." Processes are grouped per app rather than listed one row per PID, and you can bring an app forward or ask it to close right from its row.
Can I close an app from Pulsr?
Yes. Every app in the ranked list has two buttons: bring it forward, or ask it to close. Closing posts a normal
WM_CLOSE to every top-level window the app owns (the same request its own titlebar X sends), so it can still prompt you to save. System processes have no close button, so you can't knock Windows itself over by accident.Does it show battery health?
Yes, where Windows exposes it. Alongside charge level, the battery card shows cycle count and full-charge capacity from Windows' own WMI battery classes. A lot of OEMs leave those fields blank. Pulsr says "no health info" rather than inventing a number. On a desktop PC with no battery, the card doesn't appear at all.
Won't a system monitor slow my PC down?
Pulsr reads a handful of system counters on a timer and draws a small tray glyph. You control how often that happens, so if you want it lighter still, dial the refresh interval up in Settings. There is no background indexing, no history database, and no network activity beyond the periodic update check.
Why does it live in the tray instead of opening a window?
That's deliberate. It's the whole point. Pulsr's vitals need to be visible all the time without taking up taskbar space, so it runs as a tray app: click the icon to open the popover, click away or press Esc to dismiss it. You can also have it start automatically when you sign in.
Why did Windows show a blue "protected your PC" warning?
Because the file is new, not because it's unsigned. SmartScreen builds trust per file over downloads and time, and a fresh build starts from zero. Code signing gives you a verified publisher name in the dialog but does not skip it. Click More info → check the publisher → Run anyway. See the install section for the full explanation.
How do I update Pulsr?
It updates itself. Pulsr checks periodically and badges the update button when there's something new (never a pop-up), and you can turn the check off. Click it and Pulsr downloads the new installer, verifies its signature and version before running anything, installs over itself and reopens. Your settings carry over.
How is this different from the Mac version?
Same engine, same "what's using your PC" guarantee, rebuilt on Windows APIs rather than macOS ones. The real difference is the tray itself: macOS hands a menu-bar app a wide strip, so it can show several metrics side by side; Windows gives an app one small square, so this build shows your top metric on the glyph and puts the rest in the tooltip. Both builds self-update in place.
Where do my settings live, and what does uninstalling remove?
Preferences sit in
%APPDATA%\Pulsr. Uninstalling removes the app from %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Pulsr; delete those two if you want every trace gone. Nothing is written outside your user account, and nothing goes in the registry beyond the uninstall entry and, if you enabled it, the login-item value.