TrafficMonitor: two editions collapsing into one, and the temperature feature you are told to avoid

The standard edition is being retired and the Lite edition absorbs it

The version notes carry a structural change rather than a feature change. Starting from 1.86, the Lite edition also provides GPU utilization and disk utilization monitoring, so compared with the standard edition it now lacks only temperature monitoring. The project then states that temperature monitoring will no longer be maintained, that TrafficMonitor will no longer provide the standard edition, and that only the Lite edition will be provided. Temperature monitoring has moved to the hardware monitoring plugin, listed in a separate TrafficMonitorPlugins repository, and anyone who still needs it is sent to that download page. That leaves the feature comparison table describing a split that is closing: of the rows in it, the only one where the two editions differ is the temperature row. Note the timing against the release record. The newest release is V1.86 dated 2026-03-29, the one before it is V1.85.1 from 2025-02-10, and the default branch master was last pushed on 2026-09-27, so the retirement is announced in the file while the branch has moved well past the last tagged build.

Temperature monitoring ships disabled, and the project warns you off it

The feature that justified the standard edition's privilege level is the one the project describes most cautiously. Hardware monitoring arrived in 1.80 and covers temperature monitoring, GPU usage monitoring, and CPU frequency monitoring, built on the third-party open source library LibreHardwareMonitor, and the repository carries an OpenHardwareMonitorApi directory at the root. Temperature monitoring is off by default and has to be switched on deliberately under Options, General settings, Hardware monitoring. The warning that follows is blunt: hardware monitoring may have problems, it may use more CPU and memory, and according to some user reports enabling the temperature feature causes program crashes and system freezes, so do not turn it on unless you accept those risks. A dedicated section of Help.md exists for temperature problems. The consequence for a reader is an odd shape. The headline capability of the elevated edition is being retired, ships disabled, and is documented as a source of crashes, and the only guidance attached to it is a troubleshooting page.

The only difference left between the editions is the one being removed

The comparison table is short and its asymmetry is the entire argument for the standard edition. Both editions show network speed, CPU and memory utilization, CPU frequency, GPU utilization, disk utilization, network details, the plugin system, and main window skin changing. Only the standard edition carries CPU, GPU, disk, and motherboard temperature monitoring, and only the standard edition requires administrator rights. So the privilege you accept to obtain temperature buys nothing else, and Lite gives up temperature and nothing more. The project says as much when it recommends Lite for anyone who does not need hardware information such as temperature, and when it notes that Lite gained GPU and disk utilization from 1.86. For anyone already on the standard edition, the remaining justification is a feature that is deprecated, relocated to a plugin, and documented as risky. The repository still expresses the two editions as separate build targets, with both TrafficMonitor.sln and TrafficMonitor_Lite.sln at the root, so the split survives in the build even as it closes in what is distributed.

Plugins are DLL files dropped into a folder beside the executable

The plugin system arrived in 1.82 and the loading rule is the whole of it. A plugin DLL must be placed in the `plugins` directory at the same level as `TrafficMonitor.exe`, and plugins load automatically when the program starts. What is loaded appears in the right-click menu under more functions, then plugin management, where it can be managed. The repository ships a PluginDemo directory, the development guide lives in the project wiki, and plugins themselves are downloaded from the TrafficMonitorPlugins repository. What the project does not state is any vetting story. There is no signing requirement, no allowlist, and no statement about which program build a given plugin was written against; a plugin is a DLL in a folder. That matters more now that temperature monitoring is being delivered this way. A feature the maintainers decided not to maintain inside the application is being handed to a mechanism whose trust and compatibility rules are left unstated, and the new temperature path is the first thing most users will meet through it.

A skin.ini cannot show what a skin.xml can, and backgrounds changed format

The skin system has been revised twice and the revisions do not compose in the direction that matters. Skins live in the `skins` directory beside the program, each in its own folder whose name is the skin's name. `background.bmp` and `background_l.bmp` are the background images, and `skin.ini` is the configuration file, where you set text colour, font, skin author, and the size and position of each item. From 1.80 there is also an XML configuration file, `skin.xml`, and the project states plainly that only the XML format supports temperature and GPU usage display. From 1.85, PNG backgrounds are supported as `background.png` and `background_l.png`, so a skin can have a transparent background. The consequence is that a skin authored against `skin.ini` cannot display those two items regardless of its contents, because the capability lives in the other config format rather than in the binary. Skins are distributed from a separate TrafficMonitorSkin repository, so re-authoring them is somebody's ongoing work, and the items they would be re-authored for are precisely the ones being deprecated.

Taskbar mode is opt-in, off by default, and configured separately from the window

Two advertised surfaces are not on by default and do not share settings. On startup the program shows a floating window with the network speed, and right-clicking it opens the context menu. Taskbar display is opt-in: the default is the floating window alone, and the taskbar window is enabled from the right-click menu. Once it is on, the taskbar window shows network speed by itself, and adding CPU, memory, or anything else means opening display settings from its own right-click menu and ticking items in the dialog. The options dialog then treats the two windows as separate objects, allowing text colour, font, background colour, network speed unit, and displayed text to be set independently for the main window and the taskbar window. The general settings tab adds automatic update checks, running at startup, and when to raise notifications, and since 1.72 each item's text colour can be set individually by ticking the per-item colour option. So a preference that looks like one is at least three, and the network adapter is a fourth choice when a machine has more than one network card, with both automatic and manual selection offered.

No official website, so the trust surface is a mirror and a netdisk code

The project is direct about distribution. It states that the domain www.trafficmonitor.cn has nothing to do with the author, that TrafficMonitor has no official website at all, and that any site claiming to be the official site is a pirate site that should not be visited or downloaded from. It then names the only three channels: the GitHub page, the Gitee page, and the author's own Baidu Netdisk share link with the extraction code `ou0m`. The repository metadata agrees with the first half of that, since it lists no homepage. The extra channels exist for practical reasons and the project says so, offering Gitee to users who hit slow GitHub downloads and pointing at the Release CI workflow on GitHub Actions for prerelease builds. What a reader should take from this is that a mirror and a personal file share are part of the intended distribution, so verifying what you run comes down to which of those three links you arrived through. The root also carries both LICENSE and LICENSE_CN while the repository's licence field carries no clear identifier, and a `version.info` plus `version_utf8.info` pair sits beside them.

Editorial conclusion

TrafficMonitor is a reasonable pick if you want a small Windows overlay for network speed and CPU and memory, and Lite is the edition to take, since the standard edition is being retired and asks for administrator rights in exchange for temperature monitoring alone. Leave temperature and hardware monitoring off, or read Help.md first, because the project itself reports crashes and system freezes when those are enabled and is moving the feature into a plugin. Two things to check before depending on it: the newest release is V1.86 dated 2026-03-29 while the branch was last pushed on 2026-09-27, so the edition change may not be in a binary you can download yet, and the project states it has no official website, so take builds from the GitHub releases, the Gitee mirror, or the author's netdisk link and from nowhere else.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository
3. Release notes