VRAMHog

A tiny always-on-top widget that shows which app is eating your VRAM.

Windows · NVIDIA · free and open source

Why this exists

Task Manager will happily tell you the GPU is at 98%. It will not tell you which of your six open apps is responsible — and if you run local AI tools, half of them show up as identical python.exe entries.

VRAMHog does. It sits in a corner of your screen, names the apps properly, and shows exactly how much VRAM each one is holding.

The VRAMHog widget showing two GPUs with per-process VRAM — Two GPUs, with the apps on each one broken out underneath.

Per-app VRAM See what's holding memory, by name — ComfyUI, Ollama, Blender, your browser.

Live tray number Your busiest GPU's load as a red number on pink, right in the system tray.

Compact mode Double-click to shrink it to a thin strip of bars that stays out of the way.

Multi-GPU One card per GPU. Built on a two-GPU machine, which is the whole point.

Installing it

Download VRAMHog.exe from the latest release. It's a single file — there's no installer.
Put it somewhere permanent like Documents or a Tools folder. Don't leave it in Downloads, since the widget will need to find itself again if you switch on "Start with Windows".
Double-click it. Windows will show a blue "Windows protected your PC" box the first time — that's expected, here's how to get past it.
That's it. The widget appears in the top-left of your screen. Drag it wherever you like; it'll remember.

You'll need

Windows 10 or 11
An NVIDIA graphics card, with the normal NVIDIA driver installed

AMD and Intel graphics aren't supported — VRAMHog reads NVIDIA's own driver library to get its numbers. You do not need Python, or anything else, to run the .exe.

"Windows protected your PC"

This warning is normal, and it isn't about a virus. It appears because the app isn't code-signed. A signing certificate costs a few hundred dollars a year, which is a lot for a free tool given away by one person. Windows shows this for every unsigned app until enough people have downloaded it.

To run it anyway:

Click More info in the blue box.
Click Run anyway.

You'll only have to do this once per version.

Prefer to check it first?

Two things you can do, and both are reasonable habits for any unsigned download:

Scan it. Upload the file to VirusTotal for a second opinion from ~70 antivirus engines. (A couple of engines flag every PyInstaller-built app on principle; that's a known false positive pattern.)
Check the fingerprint. Run this in PowerShell, in the folder you saved the file to:
```
Get-FileHash .\VRAMHog.exe -Algorithm SHA256
```
For v1.0.0 it should print:
```
6ab70df03afdb8fbba2201553ad503a89a1de5de361aaa809b8d27ffefeabcd5
```
If it matches, the file you have is byte-for-byte the file that was published. If it doesn't, don't run it.

And because it's open source, you can always skip the .exe entirely and run it from the source code instead.

Using it

Right-click the bunny-pig in your system tray for the menu. Everything is a toggle, and every choice is remembered.

Menu item	What it does
Restore	Brings the widget back after you've minimised it.
Compact view	Shrinks it to a slim strip of bars. Double-clicking the widget does the same thing.
Show GPU% on tray icon	Replaces the tray icon with your busiest GPU's load, as a red number on pink.
Start with Windows	Launches VRAMHog automatically when you log in. Untick to stop.
Show splash on start	The logo screen at launch. Untick if you'd rather it start silently — handy once it's launching at every login.
Quit	Closes it properly. The ✕ on the widget does the same; the – just hides it to the tray.

Can't find the tray icon? Windows 11 hides new tray icons behind the little ^ arrow. Click the arrow, then drag the bunny-pig down onto the taskbar to keep it visible. There's no way for an app to do this for you.

If something's not right

It says "No NVIDIA GPU found"

VRAMHog talks to NVIDIA's driver directly. This message means that driver didn't answer. Usually one of:

The machine has AMD or Intel graphics — not supported, sorry.
The NVIDIA driver isn't installed, or needs a reboot after an update.
You're on a laptop where the NVIDIA chip is currently powered down. Opening any GPU-using app usually wakes it.

Nothing happens when I double-click it

It's probably already running — VRAMHog only allows one copy at a time, and a second launch just brings the existing one back to the front. Check the tray (including behind the ^ arrow). If the widget is hidden off-screen, right-click the tray icon and choose Restore.

The process list is empty, but the GPU bars work

The per-app numbers come from Windows' own GPU performance counters. If those are disabled or damaged on your machine, the summary still works but the list goes quiet. Rebuild the counters from an administrator Command Prompt and reboot:

lodctr /R

An app shows up as "python.exe" instead of its real name

VRAMHog recognises apps from a keyword list, and yours isn't on it yet. Either open an issue naming the tool, or add it yourself — it's a one-line change in vramhog/process_labeler.py, and pull requests are welcome.

"Start with Windows" won't stay ticked

VRAMHog adds a shortcut to your Startup folder, and something is blocking it — usually a managed/work PC, or a security tool guarding that folder. You can add it by hand instead: press Win + R, type shell:startup, and drop a shortcut to VRAMHog.exe into the folder that opens.

Running from source

If you'd rather not run a downloaded executable:

git clone https://github.com/scarylasers/VRAMHog.git
cd VRAMHog
pip install -r requirements.txt
python -m vramhog.main

Needs Python 3.10 or newer. To get Desktop and Start Menu shortcuts that launch it without a console window flashing up:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install_shortcuts.ps1

What it does and doesn't do

It reads GPU statistics and the names of processes using the GPU. That's all.
No network connection, no telemetry, no analytics, no update check.
The only thing it writes is a small settings file at %APPDATA%\VRAMHog\config.json holding your window position and toggles — plus the Startup shortcut, if you ask for one.
Nothing is installed and nothing is added to your registry. Delete the .exe and it's gone.