Grafana Stream Deck Plugin

72×72 pixel micro-dashboards. Always visible. Never buried.

The Problem We Solve

More Screens ≠ More Observability

Wall displays are great for high-level status. But during the "fog of war" of an active incident, they fail. Your peripheral vision is tuned for motion and patterns, not dense charts.

That's why car dashboards, cockpits, and game HUDs all put tiny signals just below the line of sight. We thought: why not Grafana?

This plugin brings real observability to a device that sits right on your desk—always visible, never buried under a Zoom call or code editor.

How It Works

  • Display live Grafana metrics on your Stream Deck
  • 72×72 pixel panels optimized for glance-first awareness
  • Click a button to open the full dashboard instantly
  • Automatic color-coded thresholds (green = good, red = bad)
  • All your API keys encrypted locally on your machine
  • Zero telemetry. Your data stays yours.

Featured at GrafanaCon 2026

⭐ Lightning Talk: Micro-Dashboards Improve Incident Response

Speaker: Gerard de Jong
Event: GrafanaCon 2026

Gerard's Vision

Gerard de Jong used to believe the same lie everyone else does: More screen = more observability. But then he hacked a Stream Deck to show 72×72 pixel Grafana dashboard panels, always visible in his peripheral vision, and it completely changed how he handles incidents. Suddenly:

This talk demonstrates practical patterns for real on-call life and shows why micro-dashboards let you often see anomalies before alerts fire—while everyone else is still opening Grafana.

What You'll Learn

72×72 Pixels = Wall Display Power

Learn why tiny displays outperform large dashboards during incidents and how to design for glance-first awareness.

Secure Grafana Integration

Discover how to safely integrate Grafana with your Stream Deck using encrypted API tokens and read-only service accounts.

Escape Tab Blindness

Real on-call professionals don't wait for PagerDuty to fire. Learn how to see problems before they become incidents.

Ready-to-Use Patterns

Practical, battle-tested layouts for Stream Deck + Grafana that work for real teams running production systems.

Quick Setup Guide

📦 Coming to Elgato Marketplace

The plugin will be available on the Elgato Stream Deck Marketplace soon.

In the meantime, visit our GitHub repository for installation and development details.

Part 1: Create a Grafana API Token

In Grafana

  1. Log in to your Grafana instance
  2. Go to AdministrationUsers and accessService accounts
  3. Click Add service account
  4. Name it Stream Deck Plugin
  5. Set Role to Viewer (read-only only!)
  6. Click Create
  7. Add a token and copy it immediately

Security Best Practices

  • ✓ Always use a read-only service account
  • ✓ Never use a personal account token
  • ✓ Store your token in a secure location
  • ✓ Your token is encrypted with AES-256 on your machine

Part 2: Configure Your Stream Deck

Auto Configuration (Recommended)

  1. Install the plugin on your Stream Deck
  2. Paste your Grafana API URL (e.g., https://grafana.example.com/api)
  3. Paste your service account token
  4. Select a dashboard from the dropdown
  5. Select a panel to display on your key
  6. Done! The plugin handles the rest

Manual Configuration

  1. Set Configuration Mode to Manual
  2. Enter a custom title for the key
  3. Optionally set a URL to open when clicked
  4. Specify your data source (e.g., Prometheus)
  5. Write your query (PromQL, etc.)
  6. Configure display units and color thresholds

Open Source & Community

Build Your Own

The core library powering this plugin is open source. Want to build a similar integration for another platform? Absolutely! We've made it easy.

Why We Open Sourced It

We believe the best tools come from the community. By sharing the core library, developers can build micro-dashboard integrations for:

  • ✓ Raspberry Pi displays
  • ✓ Custom Stream Deck plugins
  • ✓ Browser-based dashboards
  • ✓ Mobile applications
  • ✓ IoT devices

Tested Dashboards

We've verified this plugin works beautifully with popular Grafana dashboards:

Verified

Node Exporter Full

Monitor Linux system metrics with beautiful visualizations of CPU, memory, disk, and network performance.

View Dashboard
Verified

Kubernetes Monitoring

Track pod metrics, cluster health, and workload performance across your Kubernetes infrastructure.

View Dashboard
Verified

Docker Monitoring

Monitor container performance, resource usage, and health metrics in real time.

View Dashboard
Verified

Prometheus 2.0 Overview

Monitor your Prometheus instance itself—targets, scrape performance, and time series cardinality.

View Dashboard

Why Glitchy Software

Privacy First

No telemetry. No tracking. No analytics. Your API keys stay encrypted on your machine. We literally can't see your data.

Security Focused

AES-256 encryption for all tokens. Read-only API access enforced. Best practices baked into every layer.

SRE Focused

Built by people who actually work on-call. We understand the pain of incidents and the value of real-time awareness.

Community Driven

Open source core. Extensible design. We want others to build on this. Let's make observability better together.

Get Started

Ready to improve your incident response?