Performance HUD: real-time performance profiler

Microsoft has made a new application “Performance HUD” available for Windows 10 that can be downlaoded and installed by clicking on the download link below. As per Microsoft, it is a real-time performance profiler that detects and identifies the source of high resource usage, GDI leaks, memory leaks and more.

Details & download link:

HUD (“Head Up Display”) is a performance profiler that monitors the following data in real time or via Event Trace Log (*.etl) analysis, showing associated call stacks for create/destroy/read/write operations as appropriate. HUD displays the following information in real-time: module load/unload history, thread create/destroy history, registry activity, file I/O activity, hangs (soft and hard), GDI/User handle activity, GDI leak detection, heap allocation activity, insights that call out perf issues automatically detected by HUD. No per-app instrumentation or setup is required. Just attach to a running process or have HUD launch and attach to a new process and you’re up and running. NOTE: HUD will resolve call stack symbols based on the symbol path specified in the _NT_SYMBOL_PATH environment variable, or the MS public symbol server if _NT_SYMBOL_PATH is not set.

Download link

How to install and screenshots:

When you click on the download link you will prompted to save a “.msi” file. You can click on this file to install this application. Check the screenshots below. GDI Leak detection feature requires Windows 10 version 1903 or later.

Once installed you can use the Performance HUD right from the start menu as shown in the screenshot above. A command line interface is available too. You need to run ‘hud.exe /?’ for more information.