Know when your internet drops
Know when your internet drops
Netty is a free and open source macOS application that provides real time internet connectivity monitoring through a colored dot in the menu bar. The dot displays green when the connection is online and stable, yellow when latency, jitter, or packet loss is high, and red when there is no internet access. The application checks internet connectivity every ten seconds by querying Apple's captive portal page and Google's servers, and times a handshake with Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 DNS server. This approach verifies actual internet access rather than merely confirming a local Wi-Fi connection, so it can detect situations such as hotel sign in pages that require authentication. The application includes several configurable features. Users can receive notifications when the connection drops and when it returns, with the duration of the outage displayed. The popover shows network details including the Wi Fi network name, VPN status, and local and public IP addresses, which can be copied with a click. A built in speed test uses Apple's networkQuality tool and runs on demand or on a user defined schedule, with scheduled tests automatically skipping iPhone hotspots. The popover layout is customizable, allowing users to show, hide, or rearrange sections such as latency information or IP addresses. The menu bar icon can be displayed in color or black and white, and users can choose between circle symbols or custom images for each status. Typical use cases include monitoring internet reliability for remote work, video calls, or any activity where connection stability is important. The application respects Focus modes and can launch at login for continuous monitoring. Users can adjust the thresholds that determine when the yellow and red indicators appear, with default settings triggering yellow at a median latency of 150 milliseconds or more, jitter of 50 milliseconds or more, or 20 percent of checks failing to receive a response. All limits are described in plain language within the settings. Netty is built in Swift for macOS 26 or later. It is distributed as a DMG file or through Homebrew, and is not yet notarized by Apple, requiring users to manually approve the application in System Settings upon first launch. The application requests notification and location permissions, with location access used only to display the Wi Fi network name; both permissions are optional. Netty does not collect analytics, telemetry, or require an account. Each connectivity check uses a few hundred bytes of data, and speed tests use tens to hundreds of megabytes only when initiated by the user or a scheduled task. The source code is available on GitHub under the GPL 3.0 license.