Platform Support

🖥️ Platform Support

What WattSeal measures directly vs. estimates, by OS and component. General install steps live in the README; this page covers what happens once it's running.

	🪟 Windows	🐧 Linux	🍎 macOS
CPU energy	✅	✅	Estimated
NVIDIA GPU	✅	✅	❌
AMD GPU	✅	❌	❌
Intel GPU	✅	❌	❌
RAM, disk, network	Estimated	Estimated	Estimated
Per-process breakdown	✅	✅	✅
Auto start on login	✅	❌	❌

On Windows, admin privileges are only needed to install driver on first run. After that, WattSeal can run as a normal user.

On Linux, root is needed each time WattSeal starts, to read the RAPL energy file.

Support without admin privileges

	🪟 Windows	🐧 Linux	🍎 macOS
CPU energy	Estimated	Estimated	Estimated
NVIDIA GPU	✅	✅	❌
AMD GPU	✅	❌	❌
Intel GPU	✅	❌	❌
RAM, disk, network	Estimated	Estimated	Estimated
Per-process breakdown	✅	✅	✅
Auto start on login	✅	❌	❌

Rendering fallback

If the UI fails to start (older GPUs, VMs), WattSeal retries automatically with a software renderer. To force it:

ICED_BACKEND=tiny-skia

Improving platform support

We want WattSeal to work well on all platforms, and welcome contributions to improve support, especially on Linux and macOS. If you have a machine with hardware WattSeal doesn't fully support yet, please open an issue or submit a pull request.

Check out the contributing guide