OmniMem: New IDE RAM Monitor Beyond Visual Studio Code
Discover OmniMem, an open-source IDE extension tracking RAM usage on the status bar for Windsurf, Devin, and Antigravity IDE.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- OmniMem is an open-source extension displaying real-time IDE RAM usage on the status bar.
- It supports Visual Studio Code alongside forks like Windsurf and Antigravity IDE.
- The tool detects duplicate older extension versions lingering on the local disk.
- Users can easily configure update intervals and display formats via settings.
Since around 2018, developer Sergio Suárez Gil relied on a Visual Studio Code extension that displayed how much RAM the IDE consumed directly on the status bar compared to the total system memory. It was a simple yet effective utility that eliminated the need to open system monitors or hunt through background processes.
The workflow changed when he transitioned to other editors, adopting Windsurf and Devin Desktop for work, and Antigravity IDE for personal projects. Although these tools share roots in the VS Code ecosystem, the original memory monitoring extension failed to function because its implementation relied heavily on specific executable names and paths tied strictly to Visual Studio Code.
To solve this compatibility gap, the developer created OmniMem – IDE RAM Monitor, an open-source extension designed to display real-time memory usage directly on the status bar across various IDEs and forks built around the VS Code ecosystem. The extension is publicly available on both the Visual Studio Marketplace and Open VSX.
As modern development environments increasingly fork VS Code, hardcoded process checks inevitably break. OmniMem's approach of querying the underlying runtime to identify parent packages and auxiliary processes—such as GPU and Extension Host processes—represents a robust engineering solution for multi-editor workflows.
OmniMem presents metrics in formats like 2.8GB / 16.0GB, where the first value represents memory consumed by IDE-related processes and the second indicates total system RAM. Beyond monitoring resource consumption, the extension features a duplicate extension detector that scans the extensions directory, groups packages by identifier, and alerts users to older versions left behind on disk, such as publisher.extension-1.0.0 and publisher.extension-2.0.0, without performing automatic deletions.
Installation is flexible, supporting Visual Studio Marketplace, Open VSX Registry for VSCodium and Antigravity IDE, as well as direct manual installation using .vsix files from GitHub Releases via terminal commands like code --install-extension or windsurf --install-extension. Users can also fine-tune update intervals and compact or detailed display formats through configuration parameters like memoryMonitor.refreshIntervalMs.
Source: Dev.to
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