Show Your Internet Speed Test Result in the Mac Menu Bar

What you need

Multimeter for macOS 13 or later, $19.99 once.
Nothing to install. networkQuality and launchd come with macOS.

Set it up

Save this as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.speedtest.plist:

local.speedtest.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>local.speedtest</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/bin/zsh</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>mkdir -p ~/.multimeter &amp;&amp; /usr/bin/networkQuality -u | awk '/Downlink capacity/ {print $3}' &gt; ~/.multimeter/speed.tmp &amp;&amp; mv ~/.multimeter/speed.tmp ~/.multimeter/speed.txt</string>
  </array>
  <key>StartInterval</key>
  <integer>3600</integer>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Start it. It runs right away and then every hour:

Terminal (once)

launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.speedtest.plist

After about 20 seconds, check the file: cat ~/.multimeter/speed.txt.
Add a File meter and choose ~/.multimeter/speed.txt (press Shift-Command-Period in the file dialog to see dot folders). Set the range to 0 to your plan’s speed and the unit to Mbps.

Multimeter settings

In Customize This Meter… (from the meter’s menu):

Settings for this meter
Setting	Value
Source	File
File	`~/.multimeter/speed.txt`
Range	0 to your plan, like 500
Unit	`Mbps`
Alerts	Low values: warning at half your plan, critical at a quarter
Label	`SPEED`
Face	Needle Gauge, Arc Gauge or Columns

Tested: On October 29, 2026: the plist passed plutil -lint, and its command wrote 168.135 to the file. A shorter test inside the 10 second limit (networkQuality -u -M 8) took 9.3 seconds, too close to use in a Script meter.

More on this source, including every format it reads, in the File guide.

Limits

Each test downloads for several seconds at full speed. Hourly is a sensible pace on a metered connection; every 15 minutes is the most often worth running.

Variations

Upload speed

Drop -u from the command and change the awk pattern to /Uplink capacity/.

Stop it

Terminal

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/local.speedtest

Troubleshooting

What the meter says, why, and what to do
Symptom	Cause	Fix
The file never appears	The job didn’t load.	Run `launchctl print gui/$(id -u)/local.speedtest` to see its last exit status, and `plutil -lint` on the plist.
The meter is empty	The test failed (offline), so the file is unchanged or empty.	It fills in after the next hourly run with a connection.

Questions

Does this work in the Mac App Store version?

Yes. File meters work in every version; the test itself runs from launchd, not from Multimeter.

Why not run the test from Multimeter directly?

Script meters stop commands after 10 seconds and a full test takes longer. The file also keeps the last result between tests.

Show your internet speed in your Mac menu bar