ElBruno.OllamaMonitor

Blog Post: ElBruno.OllamaMonitor — Monitor Your Local Ollama Runtime from the Windows Tray

Subtitle

A tiny, practical tool that gives you instant visibility into your Ollama workloads without cluttering your desktop.

Introduction

If you’re running Ollama locally on Windows—whether you’re tinkering with LLMs, building local AI demos, or just curious about the overhead of large models—you’ve probably wondered: Is it still running? How much CPU is it chewing? Did that model load?

Welcome to ElBruno.OllamaMonitor.

It’s a no-frills system tray app that sits in your Windows notification area and tells you, at a glance, exactly what your local Ollama instance is doing. No dashboards. No complexity. Just real-time status, resource metrics, and a floating details window when you need more info.

Why Another Monitoring Tool?

You could open Task Manager. You could open a terminal and curl the Ollama API. You could build a web dashboard.

But you probably don’t want to. You want something that Just Works™—that launches with your system, stays out of the way, and gives you instant feedback without thinking about it.

That’s the philosophy behind this tool:

Minimal footprint — Sits in the tray, takes up one icon
Zero configuration — Works out of the box with your local Ollama
Visual feedback — Color-coded status at a glance (Gray, Green, Blue, Orange, Red)
Copy diagnostics — Right-click the icon, copy full status to clipboard
Scriptable — Full CLI support for automation and CI/CD

What It Does

When you run ollamamon, you get:

A tray icon that changes color based on Ollama state:
- 🟤 Gray = Ollama unreachable
- 🟢 Green = Running, no model loaded
- 🔵 Blue = Model loaded, light usage
- 🟠 Orange = Model running, high resource usage
- 🔴 Red = Error
A floating details window (click the icon) showing:
- Ollama version and status
- Currently loaded/running models
- CPU, memory, and disk I/O
- GPU utilization (if NVIDIA GPU available)
- Thresholds and diagnostics
A context menu with options to:
- Show the details window
- Manually refresh the status
- Copy diagnostics to clipboard
- Open the Ollama API URL in your browser
- Exit cleanly

CLI commands for automation:

ollamamon                                    # Launch app
ollamamon --help                            # Show help
ollamamon config                            # View settings
ollamamon config set endpoint <url>         # Change endpoint
ollamamon config set refresh-interval <sec> # Change polling rate
ollamamon config reset                      # Reset defaults

Use Cases

Local AI Development

You’re prototyping a .NET app that uses local embeddings or inference. You need to know:

Is Ollama still running?
Is the model loaded?
How much VRAM is the embedding model using?

Answer: Glance at the tray. Done.

Demo Presentations

You’re live-demoing a local AI feature. Suddenly, the inference slows down. Your audience wonders: Is it CPU-bound? GPU-saturated? Out of memory?

Answer: Click the tray icon, show the floating window with real-time metrics, explain what’s happening. Credibility earned.

Resource Awareness

You’re running Ollama in the background while you work. Occasionally, your system gets sluggish. Is it Ollama? Is the model loading? Is it GPU-bound?

Answer: Check the tray. If it’s orange, you know Ollama is hogging resources. You can decide whether to wait or pause it.

CI/CD & Automation

You’re running tests that depend on a local Ollama instance. You want to verify Ollama is healthy before running tests.

Answer: Use the CLI:

ollamamon config  # Returns current config
curl http://localhost:11434/api/version  # Via the app, you know the endpoint

Installation

Via NuGet (Recommended)

dotnet tool install --global ElBruno.OllamaMonitor

That’s it. The ollamamon command is now in your PATH.

From Source

Clone the repository, build, and run:

git clone https://github.com/ElBruno/ElBruno.OllamaMonitor.git
cd ElBruno.OllamaMonitor
dotnet build
dotnet run --project src/ElBruno.OllamaMonitor/

Configuration

All settings are stored in a JSON file:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\ElBruno\OllamaMonitor\settings.json

Default values are sensible for most use cases:

{
  "endpoint": "http://localhost:11434",
  "refreshIntervalSeconds": 2,
  "startMinimizedToTray": true,
  "enableGpuMetrics": true,
  "highCpuThresholdPercent": 80,
  "highMemoryThresholdGb": 16,
  "highGpuThresholdPercent": 85
}

Need to monitor a remote Ollama instance? Just set the endpoint:

ollamamon config set endpoint http://192.168.1.100:11434

Technical Highlights

Built on .NET 10 — Latest runtime, Windows-native, fast
WPF UI — Proper Windows integration, not a web wrapper
System tray — Uses H.NotifyIcon.Wpf for clean tray integration
No external dependencies — Minimal install footprint
Best-effort GPU metrics — Detects and polls nvidia-smi if available, gracefully degrades otherwise
Structured diagnostics — Event logging to help debug issues

What’s in Phase 1?

This is the foundational release. You get:

✅ System tray status icon (5 states)
✅ Floating details window
✅ CPU, RAM, disk metrics
✅ Best-effort GPU metrics
✅ CLI commands
✅ Local configuration
✅ Copy-to-clipboard diagnostics
✅ Comprehensive documentation

What’s Coming in Phase 2+?

Future roadmap includes:

Historical metrics & charts
MVVM architecture for better testability
Unit test suite
Settings UI dialog
Multi-instance support (monitor multiple Ollama servers)
Dark mode
macOS/Linux support
Advanced alerting & notifications

Who Should Use This?

Local AI developers — Anyone running Ollama on Windows
.NET developers — If you’re in the .NET ecosystem, this fits naturally
Demo presenters — Anyone who needs to show Ollama status live
Productivity enthusiasts — If you like lightweight, single-purpose tools

Getting Started

Install:

dotnet tool install --global ElBruno.OllamaMonitor

Ensure Ollama is running:
```
ollama serve
```
Launch the app:
```
ollamamon
```
Look at the system tray for the status icon. Click it to see details.

Customize if needed:

ollamamon config set refresh-interval 5  # Slower polling
ollamamon config set endpoint http://192.168.1.50:11434  # Remote Ollama

Documentation

Comprehensive docs are in the repository:

README — Quick start and overview
Architecture Guide — How the app works
Configuration Guide — All settings explained
Development Guide — Build from source
Troubleshooting — Common issues and solutions

Feedback & Contributions

Found a bug? Have an idea? Open an issue or PR on GitHub.

The codebase is clean, documented, and ready for contributions. Phase 1 is intentionally minimal—Phase 2 is where we add the fancy stuff.

Conclusion

ElBruno.OllamaMonitor is proof that sometimes the best tools are the simplest ones. No bloat. No complexity. Just a tray icon that tells you what’s going on.

Whether you’re a local AI enthusiast, a .NET developer, or just someone who runs Ollama and wonders about resource usage, give it a try. It’s free, open-source, and takes 30 seconds to install.

Your productivity will thank you.

Try it: dotnet tool install --global ElBruno.OllamaMonitor

Docs: See the GitHub repository

Made by: El Bruno — A .NET developer obsessed with local AI and productivity.