If you've ever wondered how hard your Android is working, or why it lags in some processes and not others, today's hack is just for you!

britoso on XDA-Developers.com has developed an app that runs as a background service to monitor your CPU use and communicate it to you via your status LED.

The scale is as follows:

  • less than 3% - off
  • 3-15% — blue
  • 16-40% — green
  • 41-75% — amber
  • greater than 75% — red

So far the app works on the Nexus One (Froyo FRF50 and CyanogenMod 5.0.8-N1 are both tested to work). The developer has indicated it will likely work on Desire and other HTC phones as well. Of course, root access is needed since the app talks to the low-level hardware.

If you've got root on your phone and would like to try it, head over to the application thread on XDA-Developers.com, download, and run the .APK.