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Turn Task Manager into a widget with the Summary View feature

The Task Manager app in Windows 8 comes with a feature called "Summary View", which allows you to modify the appearance of the app completely. When Summary View is enabled, the Task Manager looks like a desktop gadget. It shows CPU, Memory, Disk, and Ethernet meters in one compact window. Let's see how to activate this mode.

  1. Open Task Manager. Just press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC on your keyboard and it will be started.
  2. Switch to the Performance tab.
  3. Double click any meter on the left, for example CPU meter:
    double click
  4. The Summary View feature will become enabled:Summary View
  5. It is also possible to disable graphs while Task Manager is in the Summary view. Right click it and tick the "Hide graphs" option as shown below:
    hide graphs
    This makes the view even more compact. You can drag it to a corner of your screen and keep it running like a widget.
    no graphs

To return to the normal view, simply double click any of the four meters again. That's it.
You might also be interested in the following Task Manager-related articles:

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

9 thoughts on “Turn Task Manager into a widget with the Summary View feature”

  1. Very interesting and useful usage of the taskmanager (I wasn’t aware of that !) …
    Thank you a lot. :-)

  2. As usual, MS has an incomplete work to put in production … this ‘gadget view’ is ok, sure helps … but (always a but, huh?) where are the controls to MOVE that tiny window?… If it was selected to stay on top of the others, you have to return to the full view to relocate it…

    1. You shall try out the function first, before starting to argue. You can move the window in this mode by clicking and dragging any place of the window but border.

  3. You should definitely make an article on how to run the new Task Manager without elevating like on the old Task Manager. http://superuser.com/a/690761 :P

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