User Guide

Getting Started

Your first five minutes with Network Weather

Network Weather lives in your menu bar and watches your network all day. When something goes wrong, it tells you what broke and where.

Installing

Download the latest version from the releases page. Double-click the .pkg file and follow the installer. It only takes a few seconds.

The app won't show up in the Dock. Look for a small icon in your menu bar, up in the top-right corner of your screen.

First launch

When you open Network Weather the first time, it walks you through a short setup:

Accept the terms of service and privacy policy.
Tell it what bothers you most: slow video calls, WiFi that drops, gaming lag, etc. This changes what the app pays attention to.
Wait about a minute while it scans your network. It figures out your router, your ISP, whether you're on a VPN, and more.
Grant Location and WiFi permissions when asked. These let the app read WiFi details like signal strength and channel. Without them, it still works but shows less.

After that, the main window opens.

What you'll see

The main screen shows a network map. Think of it like a chain: your Mac on one end, the internet on the other, and every link in between.

Each link gets a color:

Color	What it means
● Green (`#22C55E`)	All good
● Yellow (`#F59E0B`)	A little slow, worth watching
● Red (`#EF4444`)	Something's wrong here
● Grey (`#6B7280`)	Still checking

The links you'll see:

Device is your Mac.
Link is your connection to the router, whether WiFi or Ethernet.
Gateway/LAN is your router and local network. With supported routers like UniFi, this shows the hops between your Mac and the gateway.
ISP is your internet provider.
VPN only appears when you're connected through a VPN. It sits between ISP and Services so you can tell whether the VPN itself is the bottleneck.
Services are websites you've asked it to watch.

There's a lot more to read in the map. See Reading the network map for the full picture.

The menu bar icon

Click the icon in your menu bar for a quick look at how things are going. It shows your network health and current speed. You can also:

Open the full window
Turn on Launch at Login
Turn on Beta Updates
Send feedback
Check for updates

Learning what "normal" looks like

For the first few minutes, you'll see "Establishing baseline" on screen. The app is running a few rounds of tests to learn how your network usually behaves. Once it knows what normal looks like, it can spot problems right away.

This takes about four or five minutes. After that, it runs quietly in the background.

Battery life

The app measures more often when you're plugged in (every 15 seconds) and less often on battery (every 60 seconds). You don't need to change any settings. It handles this on its own.