Activate the Task Manager’s Performance Window

Windows 10’s Task Manager is packed with performance stats that were added all the way back in Windows 8. You can break these out of the Task Manager window itself. To find them, open the Task Manager by pressing Windows+Shift+Esc or right-clicking the taskbar and selecting “Task Manager.”

Click Options > Always on Top if you want the overlay window to appear always on top of your other application windows.

Click the “Performance” tab at the top of the window. If you don’t see it, click “More Details” at the bottom first.

Choose the performance graph you want to see in the sidebar. You’ll see options for your computer’s CPUs, memory, storage devices (including SSDs, hard disks, and USB devices), network connections (wired Ethernet and Wi-Fi), and GPUs (graphics processors.)

To show just a performance graph, double-click anywhere on a graph in the right pane. You can also right-click a graph and select “Graph Summary View.”

You can resize this smaller window and also click-and-drag anywhere inside it to position it wherever you like on your desktop.

To enlarge the Task Manager window again, just double-click inside it or right-click and uncheck “Graph Summary View.”

If you want to change the graph to another one—for example, to change from CPU to GPU usage statistics—double-click the graph window, select a different graph in the sidebar, and doube-click the graph again.