A lightweight, open-source network monitor for Windows that displays live upload/download speeds directly on the Taskbar with a native look and feel.
NetSpeedTray is a lightweight network monitoring tool designed to display live upload and download speeds directly on your Windows Taskbar with a native look and feel. It provides users with real-time insights into their network activity without compromising system performance.
README
NetSpeedTray
A lightweight, open-source network monitor for Windows that displays live upload/download speeds directly on the Taskbar. It's the feature Windows forgot.
Installation
The easiest way to install and get automatic updates is with a package manager.
If you prefer, you can download the latest files directly from the Releases Page.
NetSpeedTray-x.x.x-Setup.exe: The standard Windows installer. Recommended for most users.
NetSpeedTray-x.x.x-Portable.zip: The portable version. No installation needed—just extract the folder and run NetSpeedTray.exe.
Key Features
💻 Lightweight & Efficient: Sits quietly in your system tray without hogging resources. Features a "Dynamic Update Rate" that automatically reduces update frequency when the network is idle to conserve CPU and battery life.
✨ Native Look & Feel: Designed to blend in perfectly with the Windows 10/11 UI. Includes smart detection for light and dark taskbar themes to ensure text is always visible.
🚀 Intelligent & Adaptive Positioning: The widget finds the empty space next to your system tray and automatically shifts to make room for new icons, ensuring it never overlaps.
Seamless OS Integration: Behaves like a native OS component.
Lightweight & Efficient: Runs smoothly in the background, minimizing resource usage.
Native Design: Integrates seamlessly with Windows 10/11 UI for a polished experience.
Customizable Widget: Adjust position, colors, and display settings to suit your preferences.
Detailed History Graph: Double-click to view comprehensive network activity history.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for anyone seeking real-time network monitoring on Windows. Users benefit from immediate visibility of their bandwidth usage, enhancing productivity without unnecessary interruptions.
Available via winget for easy installation.
Hides instantly with the auto-hiding taskbar.
Hides instantly when you use a fullscreen application.
📈 Smart Network Monitoring:
Accurate by Default: The "Auto" mode is now the default and intelligently identifies your main internet connection, providing a true speed reading by ignoring noise from VPNs and virtual adapters.
Clear Interface Selection: A new, intuitive radio-button system in the settings makes it effortless to switch between Auto, All, or Selected interfaces.
🎨 Total Visual Customization:
Free Move Mode: Unlock the widget and place it anywhere on your screen.
Optional Mini-Graph: Display a real-time graph of recent activity directly on the widget, with adjustable opacity.
Color Coding: Set custom colors and speed thresholds to see your network status at a glance.
✍️ Granular Display Control:
Text & Font: Fine-tune the font family, size, weight, and text alignment (left/center/right).
Units: Choose between an automatic unit (B/s, KB/s, MB/s) or a fixed Mbps display.
Precision: Control the number of decimal places and choose to always show them for a uniform look.
📊 Detailed & Intelligent History Graph: Double-click the widget to open a powerful and insightful history graph.
Always-Readable Smart Scale: A dynamic logarithmic scale lets you see fine-grained detail in low-level traffic while still clearly showing massive download spikes.
Per-Interface Filtering: Isolate the speed history for any specific network adapter on your system (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, VPN, etc.).
Safe & Efficient Data Management: Adjust data retention with an accidental-deletion grace period, while the database is automatically cleaned and optimized to save space.
Easy Data Export: Export raw data to a .csv file for spreadsheet analysis or save the graph itself as a high-quality .png image.
Usage & Screenshots
The Widget
The core of NetSpeedTray. It sits on your taskbar, showing your live network speeds.
Right-click to access Settings or Exit.
Double-click to open the full history graph.
Left-click and drag to adjust its position along the taskbar.
Modern Settings
A clean, modern UI to control every aspect of the widget's appearance and behavior.
Detailed History Graph
Double-click the widget to see a detailed, filterable graph of your network history.
☕ Support A Tool You Use Every Day
Let’s be real: Windows should have had this feature built-in. NetSpeedTray is my answer: a lightweight, bloat-free solution that feels like it belongs, crafted with hundreds of hours of development and debugging.
This project is a labor of love, and it will always be free, open-source, and ad-free.
If you get daily value from this little widget, please consider supporting its future. Your contribution is a powerful way to say "thank you" and directly funds the time spent on new features and long-term maintenance.
Can't contribute financially? No problem! Sharing & Starring the repo on GitHub is a free and hugely appreciated way to show your support. ❤️
Install All Dependencies:
This project uses pip-tools for robust dependency management. The following command will install all necessary packages for running, testing, and building the application.
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
Run the Application from Source:
python src/monitor.py
Run the Test Suite (Optional):
pytest -v
Build the Executable and Installer (Optional):
Ensure Inno Setup 6 is installed and in your system's PATH.
Run the automated build script:
.\build\build.bat
The final installer and portable executable will be created in the dist folder.
Contributing
Contributions, issues, and feature requests are welcome! Please feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.
> A Note on System UI Integration: To ensure a clean and predictable experience, NetSpeedTray is designed to integrate seamlessly with core Windows UI. Due to how Windows layers its system menus, elements like the Start Menu and Action Center will always appear on top.
>
> Instead of being awkwardly covered, the widget will gracefully hide when these menus are active and reappear instantly the moment they are closed. This behavior is intentional and ensures the widget feels like a polished, non-intrusive part of the operating system.
