The Sensor Reading action puts a live HWiNFO reading on a Stream Deck key: a value, its unit, a custom label, an optional sparkline, bar, or ring display, and warn/critical coloring. A key can also stack two readings as two compact rows, show three readings as rows, or show four readings in a quad grid. Drag HWiNFO Sensors → Sensor Reading onto a key and pick a sensor to start.

One face, one hierarchy: the value carries the light, the label identifies, and the unit stays deliberately quiet, with every element on the same fixed anchors as every other key, so a wall of mixed sensors reads as one instrument (the rules live in the display system).

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. Labels size themselves to the key: a short name like CCD1 renders large, a longer one steps down through smaller sizes, and only a name too wide for the smallest size is truncated with an ellipsis. A stat badge (MIN / MAX / AVG) sits in its own gap under the label, so it never costs the label any width.

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 wears a dashed border and a link badge so it can’t be mistaken for a preset chip, and names the theme it currently resolves to in its tooltip and the help line under the gallery (e.g. Deck default · Void). See Themes for the full palette and type-accent details.

Text

How bright the key’s text draws, directly under the theme gallery:

• Deck default (default): follows the Deck text setting under Advanced.
• Theme: the selected theme’s own text colors, bypassing a deck-wide Dim or Custom.
• Dim: a lower-intensity version of the theme’s text, for dark rooms and light-sensitive eyes.
• Custom: your exact color. Two extra controls appear: Text color (the main value uses it exactly as picked) and Dim labels, units and stats (secondary text takes the same hue at lower intensity; untick it to paint every textual element the exact color).

The setting recolors text only: backgrounds, accents, sparklines, bars and rings keep their theme colors, and a warn or critical alert always overrides it. Existing keys keep their current look until you change the setting. Details on Themes.

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 a gap between the label and the value, centered on the key, so the label keeps its full width.

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.

Layout: two readings on one key

Layout → Two readings, stacked splits the key into two rows, each with its own small label and a value with the unit inline, separated by a thin divider. Pick the second reading in the Second sensor picker that appears (same searchable picker as the first), and give it an optional Second label. While the layout is dual, the Display row hides.

Second shows decides the second row’s stat:

• Follows the first reading (default): both rows show the same stat, and the key press cycles them together. When that stat isn’t the current value, one MIN / MAX / AVG badge sits centered in the divider gap, the key’s most visible spot.
• Always current / min / max / avg: pins the second row to a fixed stat. When the two rows show different stats, the shared badge in the divider gap gives way and each non-current row carries its own small badge inline after its unit (the same idiom the dial uses), so row labels always keep their full width.

Two stacked rows are this layout’s limit; for more, the three-row layout trades the big stacked values for three compact rows, and the quad grid shows four readings per key, which is the ceiling. Some useful pairs:

• Two related sensors: CPU and GPU temperature, both RAM sticks, two drives.
• The same sensor twice with a pinned second stat: current above a pinned maximum, or Show = min with Second shows = Always maximum for the min/max pair in the image above (framerate lows and highs work the same way).
• A download/upload rate pair for one adapter.

What carries over, and what stays with the first reading:

• Decimals and °F apply to both rows.
• Warn at / Critical at watch the first reading only, and an alert recolors the whole key exactly like the single layout. There are no per-row thresholds; put the reading you want alerts on first (or use two keys).
• The sensor-type accent (badge color) follows the first reading.
• The Display strip is a single-layout feature: the second row takes its space, so the Display row hides while the layout is dual (the setting is kept for when you switch back).
• Row labels size themselves like the single layout’s label. Badges never cost label space.
• If one row’s sensor drops out of HWiNFO’s output, that row shows an em-dash placeholder while the other keeps updating; if both drop out, the key shows the usual Sensor missing screen.

Switching back to One reading restores the exact single-layout face; the second reading’s settings are remembered.

Layout: three readings, rows

Layout → Three readings, rows shows three compact horizontal rows: the label on the left, the value with its unit aligned on the right, separated by thin rules. It reads like a small table (CCD1, CCD2 and the core maximum of a 9950X3D fit on one key). The first row is the key’s own sensor, the Second sensor and Third sensor pickers fill the other two, each with an optional label. The third slot is the same field the quad grid uses, so switching between three and four readings keeps every pick; a triple needs the first sensor plus at least one more, and an unpicked row stays empty.

Each row’s label gets the space its own value leaves over, sizing itself like the other layouts’ labels. Values keep one shared size per key so they read as a column.

What carries over, and what stays with the first sensor:

• All rows show the same stat, and pressing the key cycles them together; a non-current stat shows one MIN / MAX / AVG badge on the first separator. Per-row stat pins are a dual-layout feature.
• Decimals and °F apply to every row.
• Warn at / Critical at watch the first sensor only, and an alert recolors the whole key in the global alert palette, exactly like the other layouts.
• The sensor-type accent follows the first sensor, and the Display strip stays a single-layout feature.
• A row whose sensor drops out of HWiNFO’s output shows an em-dash placeholder while the rest keep updating; if every picked sensor drops out, the key shows the usual Sensor missing screen.

Switching to another layout keeps all three sensors and labels; switching back to One reading restores the exact single-layout face.

Layout: four readings, the quad grid

Layout → Four readings, quad grid splits the key into a 2x2 grid, one reading per cell, behind a hairline cross. The first sensor is the top left cell and the Second sensor the top right (the same fields the stacked layout uses, so switching between two and four readings keeps both sensors), with Third sensor and Fourth sensor pickers below. A quad needs the first sensor plus at least one more; unpicked cells stay empty, so a three-sensor quad is fine.

Four values on a 72 px key leave no room for full labels, so the quad has two ways to keep the cells identifiable:

• Cell colors (default): each value is drawn in its cell’s color. The preset select offers Signal (four distinct hues), Pairs (top row one hue, bottom row another, for two related pairs), and Uniform (accent blue everywhere); the four color wells beside it recolor any single cell, and the select reads Custom when the wells match no preset.
• Cell labels: ticking Show a small label in each cell switches to a short uppercase label above each value; the label takes the cell color and the value the theme’s text color. Labels come from the Label and Second label fields for the top cells and Third label / Fourth label for the bottom ones, defaulting to the sensor name’s first word; the first 4 characters show.

Values compact to at most four characters per cell: decimals drop first, then large numbers shorten (48700 shows as 49k), so a cell never overflows.

What carries over from the other layouts, and what stays with the first sensor:

• All cells show the same stat, and pressing the key cycles them together; a non-current stat shows one MIN / MAX / AVG badge centered on the cross. Per-cell stat pins are a dual-layout feature.
• Decimals and °F apply to every cell.
• Warn at / Critical at watch the first sensor only, and an alert recolors the whole key in the global alert palette, over the cell colors, exactly like the other layouts; no cell color can be mistaken for an alert.
• The sensor-type accent (badge color) follows the first sensor, and the Display strip stays a single-layout feature.
• A cell whose sensor drops out of HWiNFO’s output shows an em-dash placeholder while the rest keep updating; if every picked sensor drops out, the key shows the usual Sensor missing screen.

Switching back to One reading, Two readings, stacked or Three readings, rows restores that exact face; the extra sensors, labels and colors are remembered for the next switch to quad.

Decimals

Controls value precision:

• Auto (default): scales precision with magnitude and compacts large numbers through k, M, G and T so they never overflow the key (48700 → 48.7k, 48700000 → 48.7M): ≥ 100 shows 0 decimals; ≥ 10 shows 1; below 10 shows 2, at every tier.
• 0 / 1 / 2 / 3: a fixed number of decimal places.

Byte quantities and transfer rates scale by their real units instead of the generic ladder; see Data units.

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 Display strip follow the displayed unit; see the notes below.

Display: sparkline, bar, ring

One strip under the value, on the single layout only:

• None (value only) (default): just the value.
• Sparkline (recent history): 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).
• Bar (value in its range): a horizontal gauge in the sparkline’s spot showing where the live value sits in its range.
• Ring (value in its range): the same gauge as a radial arc around the value.

Bar and Ring find their range automatically:

• Percentages (and duty cycles) run 0 to 100.
• Yes/No readings run 0 to 1.
• Everything else spans the values actually seen: HWiNFO’s session min/max plus the plugin’s own recent samples, so the gauge settles as the session accumulates. There are no manual bounds to type.
• Warn at / Critical at draw amber and red zones that escalate toward the alarmed end: amber then red at the high side normally, mirrored to the low side when Direction alerts below, the classic instrument convention (a fuel gauge is red at empty, a tachometer at the top). The range widens to keep the zones visible.

The zones are fixed landmarks, drawn as muted shades so they read as markers, not state; the moving fill is the live value, and it keeps its full color (accent normally, amber/red while alerting) so it always stands out over them. The gauge follows the live value even while the key’s text shows MIN, MAX, or AVG, exactly like alert coloring. The dual, triple and quad layouts have no strip, so the Display row hides there.

Sparkline notes:

• It holds the last 36 samples: one new point per genuinely fresh HWiNFO snapshot, at the slower of HWiNFO’s own polling period (default 2 s) and the plugin’s poll interval, never faster than one point per second.
• History survives leaving the page: once a key has asked for a reading’s history, the plugin keeps collecting it while the key is off screen, as long as a Sensor Reading key or Sensor Dial stays visible somewhere. With none visible (or the machine asleep) the poller stops entirely, so collection pauses and resumes from the same samples when a key comes back; the ring is spaced by sample, not by clock, so after a long pause the old samples sit next to the new ones until the line refills. (Before 1.4 a page unviewed for over a minute rebuilt its graphs from scratch.) History lives in plugin memory, so a plugin restart or Stream Deck app restart starts the lines fresh.
• 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. Keys configured before 1.2.x keep their old Sparkline checkbox behavior until you touch the Display select.

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

By default, pressing the key cycles the displayed stat: current → MIN → MAX → AVG → current. The badge under the label 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.

On a dual key with Second shows at its default (follows the first reading), the press cycles both rows together, one shared badge centered on the divider. A second row pinned to a fixed stat stays put while the first row cycles, so a configured pair (say a pinned maximum under a live value) survives any press.

On a quad key every cell shows the same stat, so the press cycles all four together, with the one badge at the cross center updating.

Press does (drill-down)

The Press section can repurpose the press instead. Open sensor details switches the deck to a bundled detail view listing every reading of this sensor’s HWiNFO source, a custom list, or everything matching a glob filter (*4090* style, with a live match count in the panel). Tap cycles; hold opens details keeps the stat cycle on a short tap and opens the view after holding half a second. Keys that never touch the Press section behave exactly as before. The whole feature has its own page: what the view shows, the one-time install prompt per deck type, and which decks are supported.

The detail view’s own Back tile is this same Sensor Reading action with one difference: its press is fixed to returning to the previous profile, so its panel shows a note in place of the Press section. Everything else here (sensor, layouts, theme, text, thresholds, Display) applies to it unchanged; see configuring the Back tile.

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.
HWiNFO busy / retrying	HWiNFO is running but its shared memory was momentarily locked. The plugin retries on the next poll; held values stay up meanwhile.
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.
Plugin damaged / reinstall	The plugin’s native HWiNFO bridge (bin/hwsm.node) is missing or was blocked from loading, often an antivirus quarantine. Reinstall the plugin; if it happens again, allow that file in your antivirus after checking its hash against the release’s published SHA-256 (how); it is unsigned, so the hash is the check.
Needs x64 / Windows	This plugin needs 64-bit (x64) Windows. macOS and Windows-on-ARM are unsupported.
HWiNFO error / restart HWiNFO	Rare. The shared memory did not validate. It usually clears on the next poll; if it persists, restart HWiNFO.

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, in three headed groups: Deck defaults (every key and dial) with Deck theme, Deck text, Type accents and Data units; Connection with Data source and Poll every; and Support. Themes and Deck text are documented under Themes, the sources under Data sources.

Data units decides how byte quantities and transfer rates read, everywhere at once:

• Decimal (default): bytes in B / KB / MB / GB / TB (steps of 1000) and rates as bits: bps / kbps / Mbps / Gbps / Tbps (byte rates multiply by 8), so 12000000 B/s reads 96.0 Mbps.
• Binary: bytes in B / KiB / MiB / GiB / TiB (steps of 1024) and rates as bytes: B/s through TiB/s (bit rates divide by 8), so the same reading reads 11.4 MiB/s.

The value is converted whenever the label changes; a 12345.6 MB reading shows as 12.3 GB in Decimal and 11.5 GiB in Binary, never as a relabeled raw number. This is display only: Warn at, Critical at, and the dial’s bar range keep working against the number HWiNFO reports (the displayed unit before this re-tiering), exactly as before.