User manual

01What Interactive Hud is

A hardware monitor that doesn't stop at the present moment: it sees, records, remembers and watches.

Interactive Hud shows the state of your computer on top of your game — temperatures, clocks, power, FPS — and, at the same time, keeps the machine's history: every game session, every hour of the day, every driver that changed, every time a fan stopped.

There are four layers, and it helps to see the difference right away:

What you need

02Installing and first launch

One installer, one permission prompt, one key. After that the app works on its own.

1. Run the installer InteractiveHud-Setup.exe — the small file you download at https://interactivehud.com/download. It fetches the app, confirms the file comes from ValenorEye and only then installs it. It installs into your user profile and does not ask for administrator at this stage. The first time, Windows may show “Windows protected your PC”: click More info, check that the Publisher field shows VALENOREYE, LDA, and click Run anyway.
2. Open Interactive Hud — it opens by itself at the end of the installation. Windows asks for administrator permission (the blue UAC box). Accept — that's what unlocks temperatures, clocks and FPS. The publisher shows as VALENOREYE, LDA, because the app is signed. What asks for this permission is the Interactive Hud launcher (InteractiveHud-Lancador.exe): the first time, it puts a copy of the app in %ProgramFiles%\ValenorEye\Interactive Hud\, where only an administrator can write, checks each of its roughly 280 files against the catalog signed by ValenorEye, and that copy is the one that runs — so the first launch may take a little longer. (Since version 1.1.41.)
3. Paste your key into the «LICENSE ACTIVATION» window. It looks like ITHUD-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX. The window also shows This PC's ID and the Motherboard ID — that's what ties the key to this machine. If you replace the motherboard, the license moves to the new one by itself if it had been on the old one for at least 90 days; it never moves back by itself to a board it has left. If you replace the board before those 90 days, reinstall Windows or change PCs, write to us at info@interactivehud.com and we'll free your license. (The motherboard, since version 1.1.38.)
4. Follow the guide — 12 short steps (8 about the Panel, 4 about the HUD) that open by themselves whatever they're explaining. You can say «Not now».

Updates

The app checks for a new version at startup, 30 minutes later and then every 6 hours — at most one successful check per day. When there's a new version, «⬇ Install update» appears with the version number — in the menu of the tray icon next to the clock, in the gauge menu and, since version 1.1.47, at the top of the Panel. It never installs itself: it tells you, and waits for you.

When you install, a small window shows the step it's on — checking, downloading (with the percentage), preparing, installing — and at the end the app restarts by itself. While it's checking or downloading, closing the window cancels, and you stay on the version you had; after that the window won't close, because interrupting the installation halfway would break it. When your computer already has the previous version stored, it downloads only what changed — usually under 1 MB, instead of the ~85 MB of the full package. (Since version 1.1.43.)

03The Panel — the front door

It's what opens when you start. It greets you, sums up the state of the machine and takes you everywhere else.

How to open it

Left-click the icon next to the clock. (Or right-click the icon → «Panel».) By default it opens by itself with Windows.

The Panel opens compact: just the face. Hover over it and the buttons and footer appear. You drag it by the design itself, and the bottom-right corner changes the scale — it grows as far as the screen allows (at most 4×) and shrinks until the Panel is about 420 px wide — handy on a small secondary screen. Double-clicking that corner restores the natural scale.

What it shows

• Status chip — «All good», «Attention» or «Critical».
• Four quick gauges — processor, graphics, memory, and how long the PC has gone without a restart. The count keeps running through sleep and, with Fast Startup on, a «Shut down» doesn't reset it — a «Restart» does.
• Your day — hours watched today, energy measured and the graphics peak.
• What changed since your last session — what changed in the machine (programs, drivers, Windows updates). Clicking opens the Logbook.
• Recent log — the latest events.
• Command hub — six buttons: the Timeline, Memory, Health, the Monthly recap, «Compare sessions (A/B)…» and «Record session (manual)», which turns into «Stop & save session» while recording. Settings aren't here: they're in the footer, next to «Sensors».

The warning bands at the top

When there's something to sort out, a band appears at the top of the Panel. The four that exist:

04The HUD — the gauges

Each number is its own little window that you drag wherever you like, on any monitor.

The first time, eight cards appear in the «Holograma» style, in a 4×2 grid centered on the screen: processor, graphics, memory and fans on top; disks, FPS, network and power below.

Everything is done with right-click

There's no mandatory settings window. Right-click any gauge to open the menu with everything: style, transparency, merging, profiles, shortcuts, sessions, the Timeline, Memory, alerts, diagnostics and settings. The rest depends on the gauge: «Shape» and «Metric» only appear on single-metric gauges (Bar, Arc, Ring…; Chip Pro has the metric but not the shape). Cards have neither — a component card has «Card style» and, on some, «Card metrics», with ready-made sets — so you won't find them on the eight default cards. And five card styles have no «Theme / Color» (see section 5).

Gestures

Merging gauges

Put two or more cards of the same style and similar size side by side and the «Merge gauges» item turns gold in the menu. When you merge, they disappear and one large panel is born with the information of all of them — in a row, in a column or in a grid.

• The merged panel has its own menu (right-click it): Style (19 looks, switched live), Split gauges, Full screen, transparency and animation pace.
• The tolerance is generous: up to 12 px difference in size, 28 px misalignment and 48 px of space between them.

Two special gauges

Monitor

A table inside the HUD with the columns Now · Min · Avg · Max, grouped by hardware, with up to 22 rows of your choice. Right-click → «Monitor rows» to choose what goes in; «Reset statistics» starts the count over.

Ticker

A thin strip with up to 11 sensors scrolling past (or standing still). Right-click → «Sensors» picks which ones; «Static (don't scroll)» stops the scrolling. A sensor with no reading drops out of the strip instead of showing “N/A”.

Profiles

Layout profiles save the whole arrangement — positions, styles, theme and merges. There's always a factory DEFAULT profile to go back to the start. And game profiles switch the layout by themselves when that game opens: turn them on with the «Profiles» button in the Panel footer, or under «Game profiles» — in the menu of the icon next to the clock, or in right-click → Application.

OLED protection

For OLED screens, three defenses against burn-in: the gauges shift ±2 px every 90 seconds; after 5 minutes with no keyboard, mouse or controller input, opacity drops to 70% of what it was (and the Panel dims with them); at 15 minutes it drops to 12%. When you touch the mouse, the keyboard or the controller again, everything goes back to normal within 30 seconds. Playing with a controller (Xbox or compatible) counts as activity: the gauges no longer dim in the middle of a game. (Since version 1.1.47.) It's off by default — turn it on with the «OLED» button in the Panel footer, from the menu of the icon next to the clock, or in right-click → Application → «OLED protection (anti burn-in)».

05The look: themes, styles and shapes

There are three different catalogs, and they're easy to confuse. This section separates them.

The 8 components (GPU, CPU, RAM, FPS, network, disks, fans, power) combine freely with the 15 card styles: 120 combinations.

The Panel's six faces

Switching theme closes and reopens the window — you'll see a flicker. That's normal.

Light and dark

The option is called «Menu theme» but it drives the whole app: Panel, Health, Memory, Timeline, reports, menus. It has three values — Follow Windows (the default), Light and Dark.

Transparency

Ten levels, from 0% (solid) to 90% (nearly invisible). On a gauge, up to 50% only the plate fades and the numbers stay sharp; on a merge everything fades evenly from the first level, numbers included.

06What the app measures

Twenty-two metrics, six reading sources, and one rule worth knowing.

Colors

Each number is colored by its state. The factory values:

On the processor and the graphics, red is the limit you choose in right-click → Application → «Alerts», and yellow follows it (10 °C below on the processor, 7 °C below on the graphics). On the Hot Spot, both are fixed. When the metric turns critical, the gauge gets a pulsing red frame.

Note: the Power and Fans cards never flash, on purpose — high power draw isn't danger.

The temperature alert

It watches three parts, each against its own limit: the processor and the graphics, against the «Alerts» limits (by default 95 °C and 90 °C), and the graphics Hot Spot, against a fixed 95 °C. When a part reaches its limit and doesn't drop below it for 4 seconds in a row, the app plays the Windows warning sound — just the sound, no balloon. If you've muted it in Windows, you hear nothing. Until that part drops more than 2 °C below the limit, the sound repeats once a minute. With two or three hot parts, each gives its first sound when it completes its 4 seconds, and from then on it's one sound per minute for all of them.

If the part drops more than 2 °C below the limit, it stops counting, and staying near the limit doesn't bring it back: it only comes back if it reaches the limit again and stays there 4 seconds in a row — and, even then, the sound waits until a minute has passed since the last one. After 20 seconds in a row down there, that part's warning ends, and the next heat starts fresh: it sounds as soon as it completes the 4 seconds.

Usage doesn't trigger the alert, however high: a graphics card at 99% in a game is working, not in danger, and it only turns red on the gauge. The sound is turned on and off in «Sound alert», in the same menu (in Settings it's called «Sound alerts (temperature)»). It's on in a fresh install; if you update, you keep what you had. When it's off, heat only shows in what you see: the color of the gauges and the Panel's state. If you had the processor at 90 °C or the graphics at 87 °C (the factory limits up to version 1.1.44), the update moves them once to 95 °C and 90 °C; any other value stays as it was. The alarm for a stopped fan or pump is the exception: it always shows a balloon and always sounds, even with sound alerts off (see section 10). (Since version 1.1.45.)

Reading rate

By default the sensors are read once per second. You can choose 250 ms (smoother), 500, 1000 or 2000 ms (lighter) in Settings. With the HUD hidden and no second screen, the interval doubles by itself to save resources — but only when no session is being recorded with the game on screen. While a session is being recorded (automatic, with the game in the foreground, or manual) it always reads at the rate you chose, with or without gauges, so the report is the same. (Since version 1.1.42.)

When a sensor is missing

The app names the cause, instead of showing a silent dash. The three reasons:

In Settings → Sensors you see, with the real name of your hardware, whether each source is answering. And Help → Export sensor diagnostics… saves a text file with every raw sensor the machine exposes — that's what you send to support.

07Sessions

You don't have to press anything. You open a game and the app starts recording.

When it starts and when it ends

The grade

At the end, the session gets a grade from S to D. It isn't an opinion — the calculation is shown on screen:

The scale: S from 90, A from 75, B from 60, C from 40, D below that. Heat only costs points in the last 10 °C before the limit — 75 °C on the graphics in a game costs nothing.

If the session wasn't really gameplay, there's no grade — and the app says so: “No grade — there was no gameplay in this session. Temperatures, energy and cost remain.”

Game or not a game?

The app decides by looking at the process's 3D engine, not by its name. There's also a list of 63 processes that are never a game (the Windows explorer, video players, seven browsers, game launchers, remote-access and video-call apps).

Recording by hand

Icon next to the clock → «Game sessions» → «Record session (manual)». It records whatever is happening, even without FPS — useful for stress tests. The same item turns into «Stop & save session». If an automatic session is already recording, the item already shows that way, and clicking it closes and saves that session on the spot. A manual recording is always saved and always opens the report.

The 200 most recent sessions are kept; the last 15 appear in the icon's menu.

08The session report

It opens by itself when you close a game that was worth it. It's the session's cover sheet.

It opens automatically if the session had at least 3 minutes with the game in front of you, 20 FPS on average and 15% average graphics load. It doesn't open, even with FPS, when the app measured that the program wasn't a game — the process's 3D engine almost idle. (Since version 1.1.47.) Weak sessions are saved silently — you can open them by hand from the «Game sessions» menu or by clicking a bar in the Timeline.

What's in it

• The grade, with the calculation shown.
• The summary line — duration, resolution and refresh rate of the monitor, average FPS, 1% low, graphics peak, energy in Wh and cost.
• The session chart, with problems marked by colored bands.
• Recent sessions in this game — up to 10 bars: this session and the previous automatic sessions of that game with at least 5 minutes with the game in front.
• The table — Avg, Min, Max, 1% low and 0.1% low, per metric.
• 💡 Insights — up to four sentences written from the numbers. The first, when it appears, compares the session with your recent normal in that game (see below).

The chart's bands

Energy and cost

The app integrates the watts over the session and converts them into Wh and the cost in your currency, at the rate you set. From that also come the cost per hour — the cost divided by the session's duration (the sitting, not just the time in front) — and FPS/W — how many frames per watt the machine delivered.

When one of the power readings — the processor's or the graphics' — is missing for part or all of the session, the report keeps the Wh and the cost and tells you what was missing in a line below the summary — for example “Scope: processor only — no graphics power reading in this session.” What would be a wrong figure, the app leaves out: FPS/W disappears if the watts don't cover the whole session, or when the “… in front” appears, and the share card stops carrying energy and cost.

If the graphics card didn't give its power in this session because the driver refused it from start to finish, the report explains it below the summary and the «Show me where» button appears: it opens the Windows Power Options page where Fast Startup is turned off. In other sessions the button doesn't appear.

Taking the data out

• Export CSV… — a file with 46 columns, separated by semicolons, to open in a spreadsheet. It includes both clocks, so the numbers can be checked against each other.
• Share PNG — a 1200×675 image copied to the clipboard, ready to paste into Discord. See section 11.

Comparing two sessions

«Compare sessions (A/B)…» puts two recordings side by side, with the differences colored, the FPS lines overlaid and a verdict on which one won. It's how you answer “did the new driver give me FPS?” or “did the undervolt lower my temperatures?”. The app preselects a comparable pair and warns you if the two sessions ran at different resolutions.

09The machine's memory

Five windows that answer questions about the past. It's what grows in value over time.

Machine timeline

A map of 7 days × 24 hours — 168 cells. Each cell is one hour, colored by the maximum temperature the graphics reached in that hour (cold → green → amber → red).

Hovering over a cell shows that hour's detail. With the mouse outside the grid, the pill below shows the week's summary.

Logbook

The written list of what happened to the machine in the last 90 days, one card per event: programs installed and removed, drivers updated, BIOS, Windows updates, disks that appeared, Sentinel warnings. Warnings get an amber ring. There are 27 kinds of event.

Machine memory

The accumulated portrait of this PC:

• Hours watched, sessions, hours of gaming and for how many days — “guarded since 06 Jul 2026 · 68 days”.
• Thermal heartbeat — the graphics maximum per day, up to 30 days.
• ID card — motherboard and BIOS with date, processor, graphics, each RAM stick with its XMP/EXPO profile and CL, the motherboard battery, every disk with its wear.
• Records, with dates.
• Where you spend your time — your top apps.
• Unexpected endings, always with a denominator: “2 unexpected endings in 140 watched runs”.

Machine health

The monthly bulletin: hours watched, energy measured and what it cost, how hot the machine got, on which days it sweated, what went wrong, whether the PC shut down cleanly or crashed — and, at the end, one concrete thing to do. It compares with the previous month, and with the last six months in bars.

The month gets a name: Ironclad, Cool-Headed, The Survivor, Under Watch, Steady or Early Days.

Monthly recap

The celebration: hours of gaming, a named archetype (The Marathoner, The Loyal One, The Explorer, Cold-Blooded, The Balanced One), the podium of your three games, the energy used, the best session and your favorite day.

10The Sentinel

It runs on its own from the moment the app starts. It only interrupts you when hardware is at risk.

The Sentinel looks at cooling and temperatures on every reading. Almost everything it sees is recorded silently — in the Logbook, the Timeline and the monthly report. From the Sentinel, only one thing interrupts you: a processor fan or a pump that has stopped while the processor is hot.

There's also the temperature alert — sound only, no balloon — described in section 6; it isn't part of the Sentinel.

11Sharing

Four images the app draws from your history and copies to the clipboard.

Each one comes from a window, with the same «Share PNG» button in the bottom-right corner: the session report, Machine memory, the Monthly recap and Machine health. They're all 1200×675, ready for Discord.

Every card carries the “✔ VERIFIED BY INTERACTIVE HUD” seal. Since that puts the brand behind the numbers, the cards follow stricter rules than the rest of the app:

• Without a game, the card doesn't talk about games.
• Energy only goes out if the measurement covered the whole session, and if the energy/duration pair is arithmetically possible.
• A session with no ending gets a “≥” in front of its duration.
• The trophy doesn't go to anyone who hasn't earned it — it requires zero incidents, zero unexpected endings, no record on the yardstick, and temperature measured on both sensors.
• An empty period isn't shared.

What goes out and what never does

12Settings

Four tabs, sixteen options. Everything applies instantly — there's no “OK” or “Apply”.

It opens four ways: right-click the icon next to the clock → «Settings…», right-click a gauge → Application → «Settings…», the Settings button in the Panel footer, or the «Show me the setting» on a warning band.

General

Appearance

Gauge transparency (0 to 90%), Menu theme (Follow Windows · Light · Dark) and Panel theme (the six).

Sensors

The list of what's answering, with the real name of your hardware. And the Per-game VRAM & 3D engine switch (on by default), which reads memory and the 3D engine only for the game process in focus.

Help

Check for updates · Export sensor diagnostics · Licenses (those of third-party components) · Terms of Use (EULA) · Privacy · About.

13Shortcuts and gestures

14Where the files live

Everything the app knows about your machine lives in a single folder, in your user profile:

%APPDATA%\Interactive Hud\

History is kept for 24 months, which comes to about 2.6 MB per year with the PC always on. The sensor census takes more — about 3.5 MB per month.

The app installs into %LOCALAPPDATA%\InteractiveHud\ — on an installation from before the rebrand the folder may still be called MMMonitor, and it keeps receiving updates. But when you accept the administrator prompt, that isn't where it runs from. Since version 1.1.41, the first time the app starts as administrator, the Interactive Hud launcher (InteractiveHud-Lancador.exe) puts a verified copy in %ProgramFiles%\ValenorEye\Interactive Hud\, where only an administrator can write: it checks each file against the catalog signed by ValenorEye and only then runs it; if the check fails, the app runs from your profile folder, and the reason goes into the launcher's log. The same folder holds the downloaded updates (the folder ending in .pacotes) and the launcher's log, lancador.log.

When you uninstall, Windows asks for administrator permission once more: that's the launcher closing the app and deleting the Program Files copy and the start-with-Windows entry. The %APPDATA%\Interactive Hud\ folder is not deleted.

15Troubleshooting

I don't see the HUD

1. Out of the box it starts hidden. Click «Show HUD» in the Panel footer, or Ctrl+Alt+Z.
2. The game is in “exclusive fullscreen”. In that mode Windows hides any overlay. Switch to “borderless window” in the game's options.
3. Was it left on a monitor that no longer exists? The app re-centers it by itself at startup and whenever the screens change.

Temperatures say “N/A”

Administrator elevation is missing. Close the app and open it again, accepting the Windows prompt. If the notice says «Temperatures unavailable», the sensor driver is missing — reinstall the app.

Graphics power says “N/A” but everything else works

The board fans don't show up

The motherboard chip didn't answer the first time. The app retries at 5, 20 and 45 seconds and then gives up. Closing and reopening the app gives it another chance. Not every board exposes these sensors.

Clicking the HUD takes focus away from my game

That's how it works: any gesture on the overlay (dragging, resizing, opening the menu) takes focus from the game. That's why the two shortcuts are global — so you can tidy the HUD without leaving the game.

FPS stays at “N/A”

The measurement follows the window in the foreground and expires after 2.5 seconds without new frames. Outside an app that draws, it stays “N/A”. Note the opposite is also true: if you have any app in front that's drawing, it is measured.

I want the file to send to support

Help → Export sensor diagnostics… — saves everything the machine exposes, with names and values.

16What this version doesn't do

We'd rather you know before you go looking. This list is from the 1.1.51 code.

Supported hardware

On integrated graphics there's no thermometer of its own: the app uses the processor's temperature — that's correct, because they live on the same chip, but you'll see the same number on two lines. The temperature alert counts it only once, against the processor's limit.

17Privacy

The app was built to work without telling us anything.

What leaves your machine, and only this:

• License activation and revalidation — the key, the PC's identifier and the motherboard's (both already transformed — we never see the original numbers), and the app version. At startup and then every 12 hours.
• The update check — two requests to our catalog (the catalog and its signature), carrying the version you have installed and the Windows architecture (x64). If you choose to install, the update downloads from the same server.
• Ping — one request per second to 1.1.1.1, to measure latency. It always runs, even with no network gauge open.
• Discord status — only if you turn it on. It's off by default.
• The second screen — only if you turn it on, and only inside your local network. It's off by default.

If you want to delete everything the app knows about your machine, delete the %APPDATA%\Interactive Hud\ folder.