NitroSense Linux

NitroSense Linux is a Rust desktop app for monitoring temperatures and controlling fan/power behavior on Linux. I created this project for myself to build a GUI app for controlling my laptop fans on Linux, and also as a learning project for anyone who wants to study or extend it.

The app is inspired by Acer NitroSense on Windows and is currently targeted at the Acer Nitro AN515-58 on Fedora KDE Plasma Wayland.

This repository also documents the exploration behind the implementation. The tracked notes summarize what was learned from Acer's official NitroSense package, the AN515-58 plug-in files, decompiled managed code, and the Linux acer-wmi interfaces available on the target laptop. The official Acer package itself is not tracked.

Features

• Native egui/eframe desktop UI
• Direct /sys sensor reads without shelling out to sensors
• Dynamic hwmon discovery for changing /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon* indexes
• CPU, GPU, NVMe, fan RPM, and power profile display
• One-second background polling with Tokio
• Rolling 35-minute in-memory temperature graph using egui_plot, with five-minute clock labels, a 0..105 C plot range, and labels shown only up to 100 C
• Platform power profile switching
• Acer acer-wmi hwmon PWM fan control for the AN515-58
• Thermal desktop notifications
• Single-instance process guard for the GUI
• Feature-gated system tray support
• Desktop entry and setup documentation
• Correctly sized hicolor application icons for desktop launchers
• Fixed 920x600 non-resizable window layout tuned for a 176px sidebar and the AN515-58 dashboard screens

Reverse Engineering Notes

The project keeps portable findings in tracked Markdown files so someone reading the repo can understand why the Linux implementation works the way it does:

• my_laptop.md: exact AN515-58 identity, official plug-in facts, Linux kernel capability scan, and current hardware-control decisions.
• nitrosense_info.md: detailed official NitroSense package analysis, named-pipe/service architecture, Acer WMI commands, fan payloads, sensor indices, CoolBoost notes, and Linux implications.
• docs/official-app-analysis.md: local-only commands for users who want to download Acer's package themselves and reproduce the extraction/decompilation workflow.

Important conclusions so far:

• Acer's Windows UI does not directly write raw EC registers; it talks to a service, and that service calls Acer WMI methods under ROOT\WMI.
• The AN515-58 official plug-in supports CPU and GPU fans, but not a separate system fan.
• On Linux, this laptop exposes fan RPM and PWM control through the kernel acer-wmi hwmon adapter, so this app uses that native interface first.
• The Intel integrated GPU temperature is intentionally not shown. On the tested Fedora install, the Intel GPU uses i915 but exposes no i915 hwmon node, no DRM device/hwmon, and no lm_sensors temperature; generic thermal zones are not mapped blindly because they are not labeled as iGPU sensors.
• Raw EC writes are intentionally avoided unless a safe model-specific path is verified later.

Build

Default build:

cargo check
cargo test
cargo build --release

Run:

./target/release/nitrosense

For normal fan-control testing, prefer the installed launcher path because the Polkit action is generated for ~/.local/bin/nitrosense:

~/.local/bin/nitrosense

Install for the current user:

scripts/install-local.sh release

Create a release archive:

scripts/package-release.sh 0.1.0

The generated .tar.gz and checksum are written to dist/.

Fedora Setup

Default build dependencies:

sudo dnf install gcc pkg-config

Tray feature dependencies:

sudo dnf install gtk3-devel libappindicator-gtk3-devel

More setup details are in docs/setup.md.

Contributing

Contribution workflow, test expectations, UI constraints, and hardware-safety rules are documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Hardware Control Notes

Power profile switching writes through:

sudo -n tee /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile

Manual fan control writes through a restricted Polkit helper mode in the same binary:

pkexec nitrosense --fan-helper set-manual cpu 50
pkexec nitrosense --fan-helper set-manual gpu 50
pkexec nitrosense --fan-helper set-manual-both 50 50
pkexec nitrosense --fan-helper set-auto

The local installer also installs a NitroSense Polkit action for the installed binary path with auth_admin_keep. The GUI never reads or stores your password; Polkit shows the system authentication prompt, keeps the authorization briefly, and the helper only accepts validated fan-control commands. Slider changes are debounced and applied through the batched set-manual-both helper command. If you run the app directly from target/release/nitrosense, that installed policy path will not match, so use the application launcher or ~/.local/bin/nitrosense for normal fan control testing.

The GUI is single-instance guarded. A second normal launch exits early instead of creating another polling/fan-control window. Privileged --fan-helper processes are exempt from that GUI lock.

UI Behavior

• The main window is fixed at 920x600, non-resizable, with the maximize button disabled.
• The left sidebar is fixed at 176px.
• Monitoring shows thermal stats and a separate cooling section. Battery voltage is intentionally not shown or read.
• Temperature graph and fan-control panels are sized for the remaining fixed content area. Fan Control content keeps a 10px left inset and 20px right breathing room.
• Temperature graph hover labels appear inside the graph only when a real nearby sample timestamp exists. If both CPU and GPU graph series are visible, both readings are shown; if one series is hidden, only the visible series is shown.
• In-app notification toasts fade after about two seconds.

Launcher icons are installed from assets/icons/hicolor/, which contains the fixed app sizes declared by Fedora's hicolor theme, including 22x22, 36x36, 72x72, 96x96, 192x192, and HiDPI @2 variants. Do not install the large source PNG directly into a fixed-size hicolor directory.

Use these controls carefully. Fan control and power profile changes are hardware touchpoints, so validate setup on your own machine before relying on the app.

Project Structure

• src/app/: app lifecycle, state, actions, formatting, and view modules
• src/app/views/: small egui view modules split by responsibility: chrome/sidebar/toasts, monitoring overview, temperature graph tab, fan-control tab, and power-profile panel
• src/ui/: Nitro-style theme and reusable egui widgets
• src/hardware/: /sys sensor discovery, platform profiles, and Acer hwmon fan control
• src/services/: background polling, thermal notifications, and tray integration
• src/single_instance.rs: per-user runtime lock that prevents multiple GUI instances
• src/graph.rs and src/graph/: rolling graph rendering, history, axis formatting, hover labels, and tests
• CONTRIBUTING.md: contribution workflow, checks, and hardware-safety rules
• docs/setup.md: Fedora setup and install notes
• docs/handoff.md: architecture and continuation notes
• docs/official-app-analysis.md: local official-app extraction guide
• my_laptop.md: target laptop facts and local hardware findings
• nitrosense_info.md: official NitroSense analysis and reverse-engineering notes

Status

The default build is warning-clean and tested. Tray support is feature-gated because it requires GTK/AppIndicator development packages on Linux.