The Sensor Reading action puts one live HWiNFO reading on a Stream Deck key: a value, its unit, a custom label, an optional sparkline, and warn/critical coloring. Drag HWiNFO Sensors → Sensor Reading onto a key and pick a sensor to start.

This page documents every setting in the key’s settings panel. For the Stream Deck + dial, see Sensor Dial.

Settings

Sensor

A searchable picker over every reading HWiNFO publishes (typically 500+), grouped by source (CPU, GPU, drives, network, and so on). Type in the Search sensors… box to filter; each row shows a live value so you can confirm you have the right one. The ⟳ button reloads the list if HWiNFO’s sensor set changed.

The selected sensor is stored as HWiNFO’s stable sensor-id : instance : reading-id identity, not a list position, so keys survive HWiNFO restarts and sensor reordering. If that identity later disappears from HWiNFO’s output (a hardware, driver, or sensor-profile change), the key shows Sensor missing / pick again: reopen settings and pick it again.

Note: With the picker open, pressing Enter with no search text typed does not change your selection (fixed in 1.1.5.0). Your saved sensor is left untouched.

The Live value row directly below the picker mirrors the current reading (and its min/max/avg where available) while the settings panel is open, so you can verify the choice without looking at the key.

Label

Custom text for the key. Leave it blank to use the sensor’s own (HWiNFO-renamed) label. Long labels are truncated to fit the 72 px key with an ellipsis: up to 16 characters when centered, or 9 characters when a stat badge (MIN/MAX/AVG) shares the top row.

Theme

A live gallery of the seven presets: Void (default), Graphite, Ultraviolet, Midnight, Forest, Ember, and Paper. Pick one to theme this key only, or pick the Deck default chip to follow the deck-wide theme set under Advanced → Deck theme.

Precedence: a per-key theme always wins; the deck theme only affects keys set to Deck default. The Deck default chip is labelled with the theme it currently resolves to (e.g. Deck default · Void) and wears a dashed border and a link badge so it can’t be mistaken for a preset chip. See Themes for the full palette and type-accent details.

Show (stat mode)

What the key displays, drawn from HWiNFO’s own statistics since it started:

Option	Shows
Current value (default)	The live reading.
Minimum (since HWiNFO start)	Lowest value HWiNFO has recorded.
Maximum (since HWiNFO start)	Highest value HWiNFO has recorded.
Average (since HWiNFO start)	Running average HWiNFO has computed.

When a non-current mode is selected, a small MIN / MAX / AVG badge appears in the top-right corner of the key.

Note: Min / max / average come from HWiNFO’s Shared Memory interface. On the Gadget-registry fallback these statistics aren’t available, so all four modes show the current value. See Data sources.

Decimals

Controls value precision:

• Auto (default): scales precision with magnitude and compacts large numbers so they never overflow the key: values ≥ 100,000 and ≥ 10,000 are shown in thousands (e.g. 48700 → 48.7k); ≥ 100 shows 0 decimals; ≥ 10 shows 1; below 10 shows 2.
• 0 / 1 / 2 / 3: a fixed number of decimal places.

Unit

Show temperatures in °F converts °C readings to Fahrenheit for display. It only affects readings whose unit is °C; every other unit is left as HWiNFO reports it. Thresholds and the sparkline follow the displayed unit; see the notes below.

Sparkline

Show recent history draws a filled line of the reading’s recent values along the bottom of the key, tinted with the key’s accent (or its sensor-type accent, if type accents are on).

• It holds the last 36 samples and fills at HWiNFO’s own update rate (default 2 s), not the plugin’s poll rate: one new point per genuinely fresh HWiNFO snapshot.
• History persists across page changes (1.1.6.0): switching Stream Deck pages, waking the machine, or the app reconnecting no longer wipes the line; the graph stays drawn. A graph on a page you haven’t viewed in a long while (over a minute) does rebuild from scratch.
• It survives a °C/°F toggle unchanged (same data, just relabelled), and a frozen HWiNFO holds the line’s last real shape instead of flattening it.
• The sparkline self-scales to its own visible min/max, so the shape reflects recent variation, not absolute magnitude.

Note: Changing the poll interval (Advanced → Poll every) resets sparkline history, because the ring is spaced by sample index and can’t honestly span a cadence change.

Warn at / Critical at

Thresholds in the displayed unit. When the live value crosses Warn at, the whole key flips to an amber field with black text; at Critical at, a red field with white text (aviation-style master caution/warning). These two alert palettes are global and never tinted per theme, so warn and crit stay unmistakable on any theme. Leave a field blank to disable it. Decimal commas are accepted (70,5 works as 70.5).

See Thresholds & alerts for the full behavior.

Note: Warn/critical always track the live value, even when the key is showing MIN, MAX, or AVG. The stat mode changes what number you see; it never changes what triggers the alert.

Direction

Alert when value drops below thresholds flips the comparison so lower is worse. Use it for readings where a low number is the problem: fan RPM, free disk space, remaining battery. With it off (default), higher is worse (temperatures, power, load).

Pressing the key

Pressing the key cycles the displayed stat: current → MIN → MAX → AVG → current. The corner badge updates to match, and the choice is saved back to the key’s settings (so it’s the same as changing Show in the panel). Warn/critical coloring keeps tracking the live value throughout.

Status screens

If HWiNFO isn’t providing data, the key shows a calm true-black status screen with a two-line message instead of a value:

Key shows	Meaning / fix
Start HWiNFO / not detected	HWiNFO isn’t publishing on either interface. Start it with Shared Memory Support (or Gadget reporting) enabled.
Shared Memory / is off	HWiNFO reports sharing disabled. Re-enable it in HWiNFO Settings (Auto mode falls back to Gadget by itself).
Not updating / check sharing (or check Gadget)	Values are frozen: HWiNFO’s Sensors window was closed or HWiNFO stopped polling. The sub-line names the source in use. (The free version’s 12-hour expiry shows Shared Memory / is off instead, or falls back to Gadget in Auto mode.)
Tick sensors / in Gadget	Gadget reporting is on but no sensors are ticked. Right-click values in HWiNFO and choose “Report value in Gadget”.
Access denied / un-elevate	HWiNFO and Stream Deck run at different privilege levels. Run both elevated or both normal.
Pick a sensor / in settings	No sensor selected yet. Open the key’s settings.
Sensor missing / pick again	The saved sensor isn’t in HWiNFO’s current output. Pick it again.

The settings panel shows the matching plain-language explanation and fix while the key is in one of these states. Full details are on Status screens.

Advanced (deck-wide)

The Advanced section in this panel holds plugin-wide settings shared by every key and dial: Deck theme, Type accents, Data source, and Poll every. They’re documented under Themes and Data sources.