Troubleshooting

The graph points look broken/strange

It's possible that your graphs won't look great out of the box due to the reliance on braille fonts to draw them. One example of this is seeing a bunch of missing font characters, caused when the terminal isn't configured properly to render braille fonts.

_{An example of missing braille fonts in Powershell}

One alternative is to use the --dot_marker option to render graph charts using dots instead of the braille characters, which generally seems better supported out of the box, at the expense of looking less intricate:

_{Example using btm --dot_marker}

Another (better) alternative is to install a font that supports braille fonts, and configure your terminal emulator to use it. For example, installing something like UBraille or Iosevka and ensuring your terminal uses it should work.

Braille font issues on Linux/macOS/Unix-like

Generally, the problem comes down to you either not having a font that supports the braille markers, or your terminal emulator is not using the correct font for the braille markers.

See here for possible fixes if you're having font issues on Linux, which may also be helpful for macOS or other Unix-like systems.

If you're still having issues, feel free to open a discussion question about it.

Installing fonts for Windows Command Prompt/PowerShell

Note: I would advise backing up your registry beforehand if you aren't sure what you are doing!

Let's say you're installing Iosevka. The steps you can take are:

1. Install the font itself.
2. Open the registry editor, which you can do either by Win+R and opening regedit, or just opening it from the Start Menu.

3. In the registry editor, go to

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont
   

4. Here, add a new String value, and set the Name to a bunch of 0's (e.g. 000 - make sure the name isn't already used), then set the Data to the font name (e.g. Iosevka).

_{The last entry is the new entry for Iosevka}

1. Then, open the Command Prompt/PowerShell, and right-click on the top bar, and open "Properties":

1. From here, go to "Font", and set the font to your new font (so in this example, Iosevka):

Why can't I see all my temperature sensors on Windows?

This is a known limitation, some sensors may require admin privileges to get sensor data.

Why don't I see dual batteries on Windows reported separately? (e.g. Thinkpads)

This is a known limitation which seems to be with how batteries are being detected on Windows.

Why can't I see all my temperature sensors on WSL?

This is a known limitation with WSL. Due to how it works, hosts may not expose their temperature sensors and therefore, temperature sensors might be missing.

Why does WSL2 not match Task Manager?

This is a known limitation with WSL2. Due to how WSL2 works, the two might not match up in terms of reported data.

Why can't I see all my processes/process data on macOS?

This is a known limitation, and you may have to run the program with elevated privileges to work around it - for example:

sudo btm

Please note that you should be certain that you trust any software you grant root privileges.

There are measures taken to try to maximize the amount of information obtained without elevated privileges. For example, one can modify the instructions found on the htop wiki on how to run htop without sudo for bottom. However, please understand the potential security risks before doing so!

My configuration file isn't working

If your configuration files aren't working, here are a few things to try:

Check the formatting

It may be handy to refer to the automatically generated config files or the sample configuration files. The config files also follow the TOML format.

Also make sure your config options are under the right table - for example, to set your temperature type, you must set it under the [flags] table:

[flags]
temperature_type = "f"

Meanwhile, if you want to set a custom color scheme, it would be under the [colors] table:

[colors]
table_header_color="LightBlue"

Check the configuration file location

Make sure bottom is reading the right configuration file. By default, bottom looks for config files at these locations:

OS	Default Config Location
macOS	$HOME/Library/Application Support/bottom/bottom.toml ~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bottom/bottom.toml
Linux	~/.config/bottom/bottom.toml $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bottom/bottom.toml
Windows	C:\Users\<USER>\AppData\Roaming\bottom\bottom.toml

If you want to use a config file in another location, use the --config or -C flags along with the path to the configuration file, like so:

btm -C path_to_config

My installation through snap has some widgets that are blank/show no data

Make sure bottom is given the correct permissions in order to collect data. Snapcraft explains how to do so, but the TL;DR is:

sudo snap connect bottom:mount-observe
sudo snap connect bottom:hardware-observe
sudo snap connect bottom:system-observe
sudo snap connect bottom:process-control