[darktable.info] DT Realtime Monitor (DT-RM)

Qor · February 7, 2026, 8:17pm

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a new tool I’ve been working on to help analyze darktable performance in real-time. Greetings to @bastibe!

What is it?
The DT Realtime Monitor is a browser-based tool that reads darktable’s log file (darktable -d perf -d pipe >> ~/darktable_log.txt 2>&1) live as you work. It visualizes the processing time of each module, allowing you to instantly see (if) where bottlenecks are occurring.

Key Features:

Live Monitoring: See module execution times update instantly as you edit.
Timeline View: Visualize the history of your edits to spot trends or spikes.
Compare Mode: Compare your current live run against a export log (Command Builder - darktable.info – Mastering Darktable ).
Hardware Stats: Displays memory usage and OpenCL device info.
Universal: Works in Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave) with live updates. Firefox and Safari are supported via manual log loading.

Links:

Tool DT Realtime Monitor
User Manual: DT-RM User Manual

Screenshots:

Main Monitor View:

Timeline View:

Compare Mode (Live vs Reference from darktable-cli export):

Trends & Stats:

Good to know:

Privacy: Everything runs locally in your browser. No log data is ever uploaded to a server.
Offline Use: You can simply save the webpage (Ctrl+S / “Save Page As…”) to your computer and use the tool offline anytime.

I hope this helps anyone looking to optimize their Darktable configuration or debug performance issues!

Chris

paperdigits · February 8, 2026, 12:13am

Looks neat! Where can we find the source code?

bastibe · February 8, 2026, 6:03am

Since it runs locally, it’s presumably just a “Ctrl-U” away?

paperdigits · February 8, 2026, 6:27am

Since the program wants all local file system access, I’d much rather take a look before I even load the page.

I’ve already been thru licensing things with @Qor… Plus if it isn’t proper FOSS then it doesn’t really belong here.

adky · February 8, 2026, 8:39am

Why don’t you just save the page using Ctrl+S as mentioned in the original post? Investigate and then run locally. You don’t have to grant permissions before that.

Qor · February 8, 2026, 9:49am

Important: The script has access only to the selected log file . It does not “see” any other data on your system and cannot change anything.

Source: DT-RM - User Manual - darktable.info – Mastering Darktable

As @bastibe wrote, the complete code is in the source of the page.

All content on this site is subject to CC BY-SA 4.0 - apart from the DT screenshots, which are GPLv3