head to head · open source
nnn vs taskbar-monitor
nnn has 22,111 GitHub stars, 835 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. taskbar-monitor has 547 stars, 41 forks, 62 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. nnn leads on adoption by 3,942% (22,111 vs 547 stars). nnn is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; taskbar-monitor is written in C# under GPL-3.0. nnn has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, taskbar-monitor 7%. nnn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (disk-usage), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| nnn | taskbar-monitor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 547 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-03-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 835 | ⑂ 41 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nnn if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick taskbar-monitor if
- You want the taskbar-monitor feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and taskbar-monitor fits your workflow better
About nnn
nnn Supercharge your productivity! [ Features ] $ $ [ Quickstart ] $ $ [ Plugins ] $ $ [ Wiki ] nnn ( n³ ) is a full featured terminal file manager. It's tiny ( 150 KiB), nearly 0 config and incredibly fast. It is designed to be unobtrusive with smart workflows to match the trains of thought. nnn can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps and pick files. The plugin repository has tons of plugins to extend the capabilities further e.g. live previews, (un)mount disks, find & list, file/dir diff, upload files. A patch framework hosts sizable user submitted patches which are subjective in nature. Independent…
About taskbar-monitor
taskbar monitor DeskBand with monitoring charts (CPU and memory) for Windows This app shows some cool graphs displaying CPU and memory usage on the taskbar (as a Desk Band). This project was made using the CS DeskBand library. Install instructions To install the taskbar monitor, first make sure you have .NET Framework 4.7.2 runtime installed on your computer. If you use Windows 10 1803 April 2018 or later, it is already installed on your computer. Then, download the TaskbarMonitorInstaller.exe installer and run it. It needs administrator rights to run, as it installs on your PROGRAM FILES (x86) folder. The…
read the full taskbar-monitor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nnn or taskbar-monitor more popular?
nnn has 22,111 GitHub stars and taskbar-monitor has 547. nnn has the larger community by that measure.
Are nnn and taskbar-monitor free?
Both are open source. nnn is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and taskbar-monitor under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nnn and taskbar-monitor?
nnn is written in C and taskbar-monitor in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, nnn or taskbar-monitor?
Choose nnn if you want the larger community (22,111 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose taskbar-monitor if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.