A small update on my Plasma monitoring widget project
A few months ago, I shared the first version of KVitals here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/s/6Aw4M7zGab
At the time, the widget was mostly built around shell scripts and JSON parsing. It worked, but the architecture was honestly fragile and difficult to scale properly.
Since then, I spent a lot of time learning more about Plasma internals and eventually rebuilt the widget around the KDE system sensor backend. That completely changed the project.
Most of the improvements came directly from community feedback on Reddit and Github issues. Many users suggested features, pointed out UX issues, reported hardware detection problems, and tested different setups. A lot of the current widget exists because people took the time to comment and help.
Since the original post, KVitals has gained:
- a full backend rewrite
- direct Plasma sensor integration
- disk I/O monitoring
- network monitoring
- battery and power metrics
- better temperature detection
- compact mode improvements
- more customization options
- cleaner configuration UX
- improved performance and stability
The project is now at v2.8.0.
What started as a small personal widget somehow became one of the top monitoring widgets on the KDE Store, which still feels surreal to me.
I also created proper documentation and a website during the process:
https://kvitals.dev/changelog/
I mainly wanted to share the progress and thank everyone who helped shape the project over the past months.
Feedback, criticism, and feature ideas are still welcome :)