v1.6.0

🚀 ThermalWatch v1.6.0 Release Notes

🛠️ System Specs & Official Driver Update Hub

ThermalWatch v1.6.0 introduces a major feature update focusing on System Hardware Specifications and an Official Driver Update Hub, bringing clean Windows 11 Fluent UI design and seamless vendor updates.

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✨ What's New in v1.6.0

🖥️ System Specs & Driver Hub (System & Drivers Tab)

• Real-Time Hardware Spec Scanner: Instantly scans CPU, GPU(s), Motherboard, System RAM (GB), and OS version.
• Multi-Class Hardware Driver Scanner: Scans PnP drivers across 7 hardware classes:
  • 🎮 Graphics Cards (NVIDIA GeForce, AMD Radeon, Intel Arc)
  • 🔊 Audio Devices (Realtek Audio, High Definition Audio)
  • 🌐 Network Interfaces (Realtek PCIe GbE, Intel Wi-Fi/Ethernet)
  • ⚡ Storage Controllers (Standard NVMe Controllers, SATA AHCI)
  • 🛠️ Chipset & System Devices (AMD GPIO, AMD SMBus, Intel Management Engine)
• Accurate WHQL Version Evaluator: Automatically reads WMI driver versions (e.g., v610.74) and displays a soft green ✅ Up to Date badge with WHQL Certified status when your drivers are current.

⚡ Direct Official Vendor App Launcher

• Automated Restore Point Creation: Automatically creates a Windows System Restore Point (Checkpoint-Computer) before launching driver updates for maximum safety.
• Direct Official App Integration: Clicking ⚡ Update opens official vendor applications directly on your desktop (e.g., NVIDIA App, AMD Software) for 1-click WHQL updates with zero browser redirects.

🎨 UI & Performance Enhancements

• Silent Background Execution: All WMI and PowerShell calls run silently with subprocess.CREATE_NO_WINDOW to eliminate flashing black console windows.
• Windows 11 Fluent Design: Accent Blue headers (#0078d4), clean card borders, and 100% English terminology.
• Pixel-Perfect Sidebar Alignment: Separated icon and text labels for uniform spacing across all navigation tabs.

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📦 Installation & Execution

1. Download ThermalWatch.exe from the latest release.
2. Run ThermalWatch.exe as Administrator (UAC prompt will appear automatically).
3. Navigate to 🖥️ System & Drivers to view your hardware specs and scan your drivers!

v1.5.0

🌡️ ThermalWatch v1.5.0 — Extended Sensors, Thermal Throttling & Preset Fan Control (Beta)

We are excited to announce ThermalWatch v1.5.0! This major update expands hardware telemetry scanning, introduces an intelligent Thermal Throttling Guardian, adds safe preset Hardware Fan Speed Control, delivers live dynamic desktop widget hot-reloading, and optimizes UI performance to 0% idle overhead.

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✨ What's New in v1.5.0

🔍 Extended Hardware Sensor Telemetry

• RAM: Real-time tracking of memory usage (%) and DIMM temperatures (°C).
• Storage Drives: Live temperature monitoring for NVMe and SATA SSDs.
• Motherboard VRM & PCH: Monitor power stage phase and chipset temperatures.
• Power Consumption: Real-time package power (Watts) for CPU and GPU.
• AMD Ryzen PBO: Real-time tracking of PPT (Watts), TDC (Amps), and EDC (Amps), with live SVI2 Vcore voltage fallback.

🔥 Thermal Throttling Guardian

• Monitored low-level hardware thermal limit & frequency throttling flags from LibreHardwareMonitor.
• Dispatches high-priority Windows Toast & remote mobile push notifications (via ntfy.sh).
• Renders an alarming 🔥 THERMAL THROTTLING DETECTED warning badge on the desktop widget.

🌀 Preset Hardware Fan Speed Control (Beta)

• Selectable preset modes: Auto (BIOS Default), Quiet (30%), Medium (50%), High (75%), Full (100%).
• Hardware Safety Floor: Enforces a strict 30% minimum safety floor to prevent passive overheating.
• Automatic BIOS Recovery: Calling SetDefault() returns full control back to your motherboard BIOS when disabled or when exiting ThermalWatch.

🎨 Win32 Native Hardware-Clipped Widget & Live Hot-Reload

• Hardware-clipped window region (CreateRoundRectRgn) and DWM rounded corner integration for 100% smooth, anti-aliased rounded corners across all desktop wallpapers.
• Live Real-Time Hot-Reload: Toggling sensors in Settings updates the desktop widget live without needing a restart, with automatic geometry height auto-resizing.

⚡ Performance Optimization

• Paused the 40ms canvas loop when the telemetry page is inactive, reducing idle GUI thread overhead to 0.00%.
• Thread-safe hardware lock (_HW_LOCK) prevents multi-threading race conditions during rapid button clicks.

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📦 Downloads

• Download ThermalWatch.exe below and Run as Administrator.
• For AMD Ryzen users, ensure PawnIO driver is installed via Settings → PawnIO Help if CPU telemetry shows 0°C.

v1.4.0 GUİ UPDATE!

🌡️ ThermalWatch v1.4.0 — The Fluent GUI Update

ThermalWatch reaches its definitive final form in this release! Version 1.4.0 brings a premium, native-feeling Windows 11 Fluent design language to your hardware thermal guardian, making it look as good as it performs.

🎨 What's New in v1.4.0

🖥️ 1. Modern Left-Sidebar Navigation Layout

• Replaced the old top-tab interface with a sleek left-sidebar navigation panel featuring custom Unicode icons and dynamic vertical page-state indicators.
• Widened window size to a comfortable 680x550 for elegant, breathable spacing.

🎛️ 2. Premium Fluent Cards & CTkSwitches

• Settings are now organized into Fluent Rounded Cards (corner_radius=12).
• Sleek Dark Theme: Premium gray-black backgrounds (#242424) and subtle border outlines (#2e2e2e in dark mode) match native Windows 11 dark mode.
• Replaced old-fashioned checkboxes with modern, responsive toggle switches (CTkSwitch).

🚨 3. Dynamic Widget Border Warning Glow

• The frameless desktop widget now has a status-aware accent glow.
• If CPU or GPU temperatures cross your defined limits, the widget border glows Yellow (warning zone) or Red/Pink (limit breached) instantly to alert you without distracting windows.
• Removed the double-click-to-close behavior on the widget to prevent accidental closure during drag-and-drop.

🛡️ 4. Deep Windows 10/11 Integration

• Taskbar AppID Registration: Implemented a unique Windows AppUserModelID shell registration. This forces Windows to group instances correctly and display the custom icon.ico logo on the taskbar instead of the default Python/Tkinter logo.
• Auto-UAC Manifest: Embedded a manifest requiring Administrator privileges (uac_admin=True) into the compiled executable so it automatically prompts for elevation on double-click launch.

🤖 5. Asynchronous In-App AI Telemetry Advisor

• Integrated the diagnostics panel with an output textbox directly in the AI Advisor page.
• Telemetry diagnostics now run in a background thread to prevent UI freezing, showing a loading indicator (🤖 Gathering data...) while processing.

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📦 Installation (Prerequisites)

• Windows 10 / 11
• Administrator access (required for accessing hardware sensors)
  Simply download ThermalWatch.exe below, double-click to launch as Administrator, and let it guard your rig silently from your system tray.

v1.3.0

🚀 Release Notes: v1.3.0 — The Layout & Usability Update
This release focuses on settings page layout reliability under Windows display scaling, silent background AI service integration, and upgrading to the latest Gemini 2.5 models.

💎 What's New
📐 1. Responsive Settings Page Layout & Spacing
Bottom-Locked Action Buttons: Restructured the Tkinter packing hierarchy. Settings control buttons ("Save Settings", "Cancel", "Diagnostics") are now firmly locked to the bottom (side="bottom"), ensuring they never get pushed off-screen under high OS display scaling.
Checkbox Spacing Fix: Increased settings window geometry to 460x560 and tabview height to 370. This provides comfortable vertical breathing room, resolving the clipping/cutoff issue on the bottom checkboxes inside the Limits tab.
🤖 2. Seamless Local & Cloud AI Integrations
Ollama Background Auto-Start: The diagnostics health check now automatically checks and launches the local Ollama background service if it is installed but not currently running.
Silent Ollama Execution: Hides empty, intrusive CMD console windows when starting the Ollama background installer and services.
Gemini 2.5 Flash Endpoint: Upgraded the AI advisor backend model ID from the deprecated Gemini 1.5 Flash to the latest stable Gemini 2.5 Flash endpoint.
Detailed API Error Messages: Exposed detailed error strings directly in the diagnostics pop-up when Google Gemini API calls fail, allowing for much easier API key validation and debugging.
📦 Installation
Download the latest ThermalWatch.exe and Run as Administrator (required to access low-level CPU/GPU hardware sensor registers).

v1.2.0

🌡️ ThermalWatch v1.2.0 — Thermal Health Advisor & Memory Optimizations
This release brings smart hardware monitoring, desktop widget enhancements, major resource optimizations, and critical bug fixes to make ThermalWatch the ultimate silent hardware guardian.

🌡️ ThermalWatch v1.2.0
A major update introducing fan speed tracking, offline thermal diagnostics, resource footprint optimizations, and visual polish.

🚀 What's New
Full Sensor Monitoring: Added live CPU/GPU load (%) and fan/AIO pump speed (RPM) tracking.
Thermal Health Advisor: Analyzes rolling load and temperature trends to diagnose potential hardware issues (e.g., flagging dry thermal paste).
Desktop Widget Toggle: Added a sleek, centered light/dark theme switch button directly on the floating widget.
⚡ Performance & Optimizations
Lazy Loading UI: Tkinter/CustomTkinter are now loaded on-demand, reducing tray-only startup RAM from ~148MB down to ~95MB.
Memory Management: Added periodic garbage collection triggers to prevent memory leaks and keep resource usage stable.
Build Optimizations: Excluded unused packages and compiled with level 2 optimization, keeping CPU overhead under 0.35%.
🛠️ Bug Fixes
Widget Corner Rendering: Fixed the black pixel artifacts around the widget's rounded corners using a magenta transparency key.
Centered Theme Toggle: Resolved a Windows font width bug that stretched the theme button in dark mode.
Fan Overwrite Fix: Stopped empty motherboard fan headers (0 RPM) from overwriting actual CPU/Pump speeds.
Recursive Hardware Scan: Traverses SuperI/O chips to reliably find CPU fans and AIO pumps.
⚠️ Admin Rights Required
To read hardware registers, Run as Administrator is required. Otherwise, sensors will show as 0 or None.

v1.0.1

ThermalWatch - Release v1.0.1 🌡️

This release introduces a brand new Desktop Temperature Widget for multi-monitor setups, along with critical bug fixes and thread-safety improvements.

New Features & Enhancements 🌟

• Desktop Temperature Widget: A floating, frameless, and semi-transparent widget displaying real-time CPU and GPU temperatures.
• Draggability & Persistence: Click and drag the widget anywhere on your desktop. Its screen coordinates are saved automatically and restored upon app startup.
• Dynamic Status Coloring: The widget text dynamically changes colors based on warning thresholds (Green for Cool, Yellow for Warning, Red for Danger).
• Tray Menu Toggle: Easily show/hide the widget using the new checkmarked "Desktop Widget" option in the tray menu, or double-click the widget to close it.

Bug Fixes 🛠️

• Fixed Temperature N/A Issue: Resolved a Python namespace duplication issue that caused the widget to display N/A | N/A even when the app was successfully reading sensors.
• Fixed Cross-Thread Deadlocks: Fixed a bug where closing or toggling the widget would freeze the system tray right-click menu.

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Please run the application as Administrator so it can successfully access low-level hardware sensors.

v1.0.0

ThermalWatch - Release v1.0.0

This is the initial release of ThermalWatch, a lightweight, silent hardware thermal guardian for Windows. It runs directly from your system tray and monitors your CPU and GPU temperatures in real-time.

Key Features

• Zero-Bloat Tray Monitoring: Silent and minimal resource footprint.
• Dual-Channel Alerts: Local Windows Toast notifications + remote phone push notifications via ntfy.sh.
• Admin-Safe Startup: Start with Windows automatically with high privileges using Task Scheduler (no UAC prompts).
• Modern Fluent GUI: Rounded inputs and buttons matching Windows 11 style.

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⚠️ IMPORTANT FOR AMD RYZEN USERS:

If your CPU temperature shows as 0°C or None, this is due to Windows Core Isolation blocking the default sensor drivers.
To fix this:

1. Open Settings in the tray menu.
2. Click Download PawnIO Driver to download and install the signed PawnIO driver.
3. Restart ThermalWatch as Administrator.

Always run the application as Administrator so it can access hardware sensors.