Activity indicator lights for a PC that has none
Desktop towers used to come with a row of activity indicator lights on the front: one for the drive, one for power, sometimes one for the network. Most laptops and many modern cases dropped them, so the only way to tell whether the machine is busy is to open Task Manager and wait for it to draw.
System Activity LED Indicators brings that panel back as a strip of lamps on screen. Drive and network lamps blink with each burst of reads, writes and packets, keep flickering through a long copy, and fade out shortly after it ends. CPU, memory and GPU lights work differently: they sit green while load is comfortable, then shift to amber and red once load passes thresholds you pick.
Unlike a taskbar icon, the strip is its own small window. It stays visible when the taskbar auto-hides, and it can sit in a screen corner, along an edge, or wherever you drag it.
Disk activity light and network activity light, split your way
A single DISK lamp blinks for any drive. Turn on Separate read and write lights to tell loading from saving, or A light for every drive to see which drive letter is busy. On the network side, Separate upload and download lights splits one NET lamp into two arrows.
Under Activity you choose how lively they are. Disk and network lights update can run 10 times a second, 5 times a second or twice a second. Sensitivity decides whether a lamp reacts to the background chatter Windows always has (High) or waits for real work (Low), Flicker under steady load keeps the lamp blinking during a heavy transfer instead of burning solid, and Afterglow controls how long a lamp lingers once activity stops: None, Short or Long.
CPU and memory lights that change color
The When they change color section holds an amber and a red level for each of CPU, memory and GPU, plus two low levels for the battery. The CORES bank adds a pinpoint for every logical processor, dark until that core passes the CPU amber level, so you can see whether one thread or the whole chip is working.
If you only want to be told about trouble, switch off Glow green when all is well and healthy lamps stay dark. The LINK lamp answers a different question: green when you are connected through a gateway, amber when connected without one, red when the network is down.
How to arrange the indicator strip
The Faceplate section sets the look. With Readout window on, hover any lamp to read its number in the readout, and click to pin that figure in place.
- Look: Rack (brushed metal faceplate), Studio (soft pill lights) or Terminal (glowing display segments).
- Layout: a horizontal or vertical strip, or Two rows; Light size of Small, Medium or Large; optional labels.
- Position: four corners, top or bottom center, the center of the screen, or Wherever I drag it.
- Right-click a lamp to shift it left or right, or switch it off; choose Let clicks pass through so the strip never gets in the way.
