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.
Key Features:
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.
README
NetSpeedTray
Live network speeds, CPU/GPU stats, temperatures, and power draw - right on your Windows taskbar.
Open source, signed, no ads, no telemetry. The feature Windows forgot.
> 🎉 v2.0 is here - the biggest release yet. The widget now docks to the taskbar itself, so it
> no longer vanishes behind the Start menu or system flyouts. And everything beyond the readout moved into
> one calm window - the new Monitor - with history charts, honest per-app and per-process detail,
> exportable statistics, network latency, and data-usage tracking. Read the release notes →
Install
winget install --id erez-c137.NetSpeedTray
Or grab the latest Setup.exe or directly. Both are digitally signed - no SmartScreen warnings.
Requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit). The widget needs no admin rights. CPU/GPU temperatures on some hardware need an optional helper - see below.
See it in action
The widget lives on your taskbar - at its simplest, just your up & down speeds:
➕ Show more on the taskbar - mini-graph, CPU/GPU/RAM, temps & power
<img src="screenshots/widget_minigraph_2.0.png" />
+ a live mini-graph
<img src="screenshots/widget_hardware_2.0.png" />
+ CPU / GPU / RAM, temps
<img src="screenshots/widget_full_2.0.png" />
everything at once
Double-click it for the Monitor - the whole story behind the numbers:
Overview. Live tiles + adaptive sparklines, a network hero with inline latency, a data-usage card, and top talkers - every card drills into detail.
↓ Click to explore the rest ↓
🌐 Network - history graph + honest per-app connections
Up/down history over a live per-app connection list - how many each program holds, how many are active, and the distinct hosts it reaches - with a per-NIC filter. No fake per-app "speeds": Windows can't attribute network bytes per app without a driver, so nothing is dressed up.
A combined CPU + GPU + RAM history graph over a live per-process CPU / RAM / GPU% list, plus a telemetry band of temperatures, power, and memory.
⚙️ Settings - six pages, a live preview, and a Windows 11 feel
Appearance - fonts, colours, and arrow-style presets, with a live widget preview at the bottom that updates as you change things.
<img src="screenshots/settings_general_2.0.png" width="780" />
<p><b>General</b> - language, update rate, behaviour, preferred monitor, and configurable double-/middle-click actions. Six pages in all: General · Widget · Appearance · Hardware · Network · Advanced.</p>
Why NetSpeedTray?
Windows has shown network usage in Task Manager since forever - but you have to open Task Manager to see it, and it's gone the moment you click away. That's the gap I wanted to fill on my own machine, and I couldn't find a widget I trusted to do it cleanly.
So I built NetSpeedTray: live up/down speeds, CPU and GPU utilization, temperatures, and power draw - all sitting in your taskbar where you can glance at them without breaking your flow. No browser tab open, no third process to babysit, no telemetry, no ads, no tracking. Built with Python and PyQt6, and signed by the SignPath Foundation so it installs cleanly.
What You Get
🌐 Network on your taskbar. Live upload and download speeds with sub-second updates. Auto-detects your primary internet connection or lets you pick specific adapters. Color-code thresholds so heavy traffic stands out at a glance. In 2.0 the readout sits inside the taskbar's layer - it stays put through the Start menu, Quick Settings, and the tray overflow instead of disappearing.
🖥️ Hardware stats too. CPU and GPU utilization beside your network speeds, with optional temperature, power (Watts), RAM, and VRAM. Vendor-agnostic GPU support - NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel. (When do temps need a helper? →)
📊 The Monitor. One window, three tabs - Overview, Network, Hardware - with history charts, per-app connections, per-process resource use, and statistics you can export to CSV/JSON. Double-click the widget to open it.
📈 Usage & data caps. Daily / weekly / monthly totals, a settable monthly cap with a billing reset day, and opt-in 80% / 100% alerts - shown as a quiet flyout above the widget, no extra tray icon.
🩺 Network latency. An opt-in probe shows a plain-word verdict - Internet: Good / OK / Slow - with the milliseconds as quiet subtext. Defaults to your gateway (stays on your LAN).
🎨 Make it yours. Layout modes, fonts, decimals, arrow styles, color thresholds, a mini-graph overlay, light/dark auto-theming, and a live preview in Settings that shows the exact effect before you commit.
🔒 Trustworthy by design. Open source under GPLv3. Signed installer, zero ads/tracking/telemetry, logs auto-redacted of paths/IPs/MACs/hostnames, and an in-app updater that verifies the signature before running anything. And it stays free: GPLv3 means that even if I lose interest or get hit by a bus, the code can't be bought, closed, or paywalled out from under you - anyone can fork it.
The Monitor
Double-click the widget (or pick Monitor from the right-click menu) to open it. One window replaces the two older, separate Graph and App Activity windows. Three tabs share a single graph engine and timeline - and the Overview is intentionally chart-free, so a quick glance never loads the heavy plotting libraries.
🏠 Overview - the at-a-glance control center. Live tiles for network, CPU, GPU, RAM, and VRAM, each with a sparkline that adapts its scale so low-but-varying activity reads in detail. A network "hero" card shows download and upload as co-equal headline numbers with an inline latency read, a context strip across the top (session uptime, period totals, CPU + GPU power), a Data usage card, and a Top talkers list. Every card is clickable and drills into detail.
🌐 Network - history + who's actually talking. The history graph over a per-app connection list: how many live connections each program holds, how many are active, and the distinct remote hosts it's reaching. Honest by design - Windows can't attribute network bytes per app without a kernel driver, so nothing is dressed up as a per-app "speed." A per-NIC filter scopes both the graph and the totals.
🖥️ Hardware - the system, in depth. A combined CPU + GPU history graph (with separate-axis and one-at-a-time modes, optional smoothing, and a fixed/auto y-axis) over a live per-process CPU / RAM / GPU% list, plus a telemetry band of temperatures, power, and memory.
📐 Honest statistics & export. Click any card for a Statistics sheet: the real distribution (min / avg / peak, with percentiles shown only where they're exact), peak vs off-peak, throttle and connection-drop counts. Copy or Export the window to a CSV + JSON bundle - and there's a headless NetSpeedTray.exe --export-csv for scripted/automation use.
⏯️ Live / Pause & a Windows 11 feel. Freeze a chart to read a moment, then resume. Native dark title bar and rounded corners, a Fluent tab strip, remembered size/position/last-tab, a default size that fits the whole Overview without scrolling, and full keyboard navigation (Tab to the cards and tabs, Enter/Space to drill in).
Hardware Monitoring - do I need LibreHardwareMonitor?
Utilization is always free. CPU, GPU, RAM, and VRAM usage read natively through Windows performance counters and psutil - no admin, no helper, all vendors. That part just works.
Temperatures and power are the nuanced bit. NetSpeedTray tries native sources first and only falls back to LibreHardwareMonitor (LHM) when it has to. Whether you need LHM depends on your hardware:
Reading
Works natively (no helper, no admin)
Needs LHM (run as admin) for full coverage
CPU / GPU / RAM / VRAM usage %
✅ always
-
GPU temperature
✅ NVIDIA (via nvidia-smi)
AMD & Intel discrete GPUs
GPU power
✅ NVIDIA + Intel iGPU
AMD GPUs
CPU temperature
⚠️ only if your board exposes ACPI thermal zones
AMD Ryzen, and boards without usable zones
CPU power
✅ Intel (RAPL)
AMD CPUs
In plain terms: on a typical NVIDIA + Intel PC you'll see most temps and power without installing anything. If you have an AMD CPU, accurate CPU temperature and power realistically need LHM. To enable it, install LibreHardwareMonitor v0.9.4 (that specific version - see the note below), run it as Administrator, and NetSpeedTray detects it automatically - temps and power across all vendors light up.
> NetSpeedTray itself never runs as admin and never ships a kernel driver. Reading CPU/GPU die
> temperatures requires a driver that Windows doesn't expose to normal apps; LHM provides that driver and
> publishes the values over WMI, which NetSpeedTray simply reads. Use LHM v0.9.4: LibreHardwareMonitor removed that WMI
> interface in v0.9.5, so v0.9.4 is the last version NetSpeedTray can read today (support for LHM's newer
> web-server interface is planned). Your choice, fully optional.
Quick Start
Install with the Winget command above (or the installer).
Right-click the widget - open Settings or the Monitor, Pause/Resume monitoring, or Exit. The top of the menu shows your data used today / this month at a glance.
Double-click the widget to open the Monitor (history, per-app activity, hardware, statistics).
Drag it to reposition - grab the widget and drag it along the taskbar to wherever you like; it remembers the spot. Turn on Free Move (No Snapping) in Settings to place it anywhere, including off the taskbar.
Want temperatures? Most NVIDIA/Intel systems show them out of the box. For full coverage (or any AMD CPU), install and run LibreHardwareMonitor v0.9.4 as Administrator (v0.9.5+ removed the interface NetSpeedTray reads).
FAQ
How is this different from Task Manager?
Task Manager shows network speed too - but you have to open it, and it disappears the moment you click away. NetSpeedTray lives permanently on your taskbar with sub-second updates, in the corner of your eye while you work.
Will it slow down my PC?
Idle RAM is about 50 MB - that's the number Windows Task Manager shows you (its full working set, which counts the shared Windows/Qt DLLs it maps, is ~90 MB), and CPU sits near zero between polls (~0.1%). The Monitor's Overview tab is deliberately chart-free, so glancing at it stays light; opening the Network or Hardware charts loads the plotting library for the session, which adds roughly 50-60 MB while the Monitor is open - close the Monitor and it eases back down. The widget polls every ~1 second using the same Windows APIs Task Manager uses.
Do I need LibreHardwareMonitor?
Often no - see the hardware table above. Usage stats and NVIDIA/Intel temps & power work natively; LHM (run as admin, v0.9.4 - v0.9.5+ dropped the interface we read) is the universal fallback and the realistic way to get AMD CPU temperature and power. The widget never asks for admin itself.
Can I set a data limit and get warned?
Yes - Settings → Network → Data usage, or the tray's Data cap…. Set a monthly cap, a billing reset day, and opt-in 80% / 100% alerts. The alert is a quiet flyout above the widget; the tray shows live progress.
Does the latency check phone home?
Only if you ask it to. The default target is your own gateway, which never leaves your LAN. Pinging a public host is a separate, explicit opt-in where you choose the host. Nothing else about your network is sent anywhere - there's no telemetry of any kind.
Why does the network name need "Location" access?
The Wi-Fi band (2.4G / 5G) shows on any PC with no permission. The network name (SSID) is different: since Windows 11, Windows only hands the SSID to apps that have Location access - a Windows privacy gate, the same one your browser hits for Wi-Fi features. It is not GPS and not tracking: NetSpeedTray never uses your position, reads the name locally only to show it on the widget, and never stores or transmits it (see the Privacy Policy). Prefer not to? Leave "Network name" off and use the band - it needs nothing. The first time the name is blocked, NetSpeedTray shows a one-time explainer with a shortcut straight to the Windows Location setting.
Where does it store data and settings?%APPDATA%\NetSpeedTray\ - config.json for settings, speed_history.db (SQLite) for network/hardware history, and rotated logs. Everything stays local. Settings has an Export Support Bundle button that auto-redacts paths, IPs, hostnames, and MACs for clean bug reports.
Does it work on Windows 7 or 8?
Officially Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). The taskbar APIs changed enough after Win8 that older versions aren't tested. It might work; it's not supported.
SmartScreen says "unknown publisher" - is that a problem?
You probably grabbed an unsigned dev build. The official releases (Setup.exe / Portable.zip) are signed by the SignPath Foundation and shouldn't trip SmartScreen.
📋 Full Feature List (click to expand)
Network Monitoring
Live upload/download on the taskbar with sub-second updates
Auto-primary mode - finds your main internet connection, ignoring VPNs and virtual adapters
Interface filtering - all hardware, specific adapters, or include virtual interfaces
Color coding - custom speed thresholds and colors to read load at a glance
Network identity - show the Wi-Fi band (2.4G / 5G / 6G) and, optionally, the network name (SSID) on the widget as a small pill; color-code it, or use alert-only mode to flash a red 2.4Gonly when your PC has silently dropped to the slow band. The band needs no permission; the SSID needs Windows Location on - a Windows privacy gate, read locally and never sent (why?)
Per-app connections (in the Monitor) - live connection counts and remote hosts per program, no admin needed
Hardware Monitoring
CPU & GPU utilization on the taskbar - always native (psutil + Windows PDH), all vendors, no admin
RAM & VRAM usage (VRAM shows "N/A" instead of a fake 0 when no dedicated-VRAM counter exists)
Temperatures - sourced in order: NVIDIA nvidia-smi, ACPI thermal zones (PDH), LibreHardwareMonitor/OpenHardwareMonitor (WMI), legacy ACPI WMI
Power (Watts) - CPU (Intel RAPL → LHM) and GPU (NVIDIA → Intel iGPU RAPL → LHM); an opportunistic whole-system figure on laptops running on battery. Desktops can't read true wall power in software, so the Monitor honestly shows the CPU + GPU breakdown
LibreHardwareMonitor auto-detection - if LHM/OHM is running as admin, it's picked up automatically for temps/power across all vendors
The Monitor
Overview - at-a-glance tiles + adaptive sparklines, a network hero card, a context strip, a Data-usage card, and Top talkers
Network - history graph + per-app connection list + per-NIC filter + detail panel
Statistics & export - honest distributions (exact percentiles only where the data supports them), Copy/Export to CSV + JSON, and a headless --export-csv CLI
Live / Pause, remembered window state, native Win11 chrome, full keyboard navigation
3-tier retention - raw (24h) → minute (30d) → hourly (up to "Keep everything"), for network and hardware
Widget Layout & Customization
Layout modes - Side-by-Side, Stacked, or Auto-Cycle (rotates Network / CPU / GPU); per-segment ordering
Mini-graph overlay with adjustable opacity and gradient fill
Live settings preview - see the exact widget effect (font/color/arrows/layout/mode) before you commit
Configurable click actions - reassign double-click / middle-click on the widget (Open Monitor, Settings, Pause/Resume, or nothing)
Auto-theme for light/dark/mixed taskbars, font & precision control, fixed-width values to prevent jitter
Units - Bits (Mbps), Bytes (MB/s), Binary (MiB/s), or Decimal, with toggleable suffixes
Positioning & Integration
Taskbar-docked - stays above the taskbar through the Start menu, flyovers, and the tray overflow
Drag to reposition - drag the widget to move it along the taskbar; your spot is remembered. Free Move (No Snapping) lets you place it anywhere, including off the taskbar
Preferred monitor - pin to a specific display (auto free-floats on a taskbar-less screen)
Survives sleep/resume, monitor add/remove/primary-swap, and Explorer restarts
Vertical taskbar + high-DPI aware
Accessibility
Keyboard-navigable Monitor - Tab to cards and tabs (accent focus ring), Enter/Space to activate, accessible names for screen readers
Reduce motion - app-wide flag, and automatic respect for the Windows "Animation effects" setting
NetSpeedTray is free, open source, and always will be - no ads, no telemetry, no "Pro" tier, no upsells, and no plans to ever monetize it. It's built and maintained by one person, in spare time, because I wanted it on my own taskbar and figured others might too.
I'm not doing this for the money - but I'd be lying if I said a little support doesn't help. If NetSpeedTray has earned a permanent spot on your taskbar, a one-time tip (or a few dollars a month) goes directly to the time it takes to fix bugs, ship features, and answer issues. When it's one person doing all of it, even the price of a coffee genuinely makes a difference.
No pressure, ever - the app is never paywalled and never will be. If money isn't an option, three free things help just as much:
⭐ Star the repo - one click, and it genuinely helps others find the project.
🐛 File a good bug report - use the template and attach a Support Bundle; it saves me real triage time.
🌍 Improve a translation - German and Spanish especially could use a native-speaker review. See TRANSLATORS.md.
Translators
NetSpeedTray's UI lives in 10 languages thanks to the people below. Each translation is real time and care - if you use NetSpeedTray in your language, please give them a star and a thank-you.
(Optional) UPX - auto-downloaded by the build script into build/tools/ if missing
Steps
# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/erez-c137/NetSpeedTray.git
cd NetSpeedTray
# 2. Virtual environment (PowerShell)
python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
# 3. Dependencies
pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
# 4. Run from source
python src/monitor.py
# 5. Run the tests
pytest -v
# 6. Build
.\build\build.bat # full signed installer + portable zip
.\build\build-exe-only.bat # exe only (faster iteration)
Output lands in dist/. (Python 3.13+ pre-release? add --pre to the pip install if stable wheels aren't out yet.)
Contributing
Issues and pull requests welcome. Use the bug report template for bugs and the feature request template for ideas. Even small things - a typo, a clearer error message, a translation polish - are very welcome.
Every release you download from this repo is signed end-to-end - no SmartScreen warnings, no "unknown publisher," and a verifiable chain that the binary hasn't been tampered with since it left CI. SignPath donates this to qualifying open-source projects, and NetSpeedTray couldn't ship signed builds without them.
Thanks
Translations by the community - see Translators above.
