Test Your Network Speed On a Mac

You can test your network speed on a Mac using speed test websites or a simple Terminal command in macOS Monterey. You can also easily put that Terminal command inside a Shortcut and then easily run a speed test from the Menu Bar any time you wish.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to test your network speed on your Mac.
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So it's important from time to time to test your internet speed to make sure you're getting the speed that your internet provider promised and to see if you maybe having any trouble with your network equipment in your house. There are a few ways to do this. The simplest way is to use a website. There are many free websites that will check the speed of your connection. One that has been around for a long time is just speedtest.net. You go here, unfortunately it is filled with ads, click the Go Button and then it will test your download speed and then your upload speed and give you an average. This just takes a minute and then you get a report like this. 
There is actually a very simple Terminal command you can use to get similar information. So just use Spotlight or Launchpad to launch the Terminal. Then type networkquality (all one word) space dash and use s. Then Return and then it's going to run the download test and then the upload test. You can see its progress right here just as a simple number. Then when it's done you get this little report here. It's nice because it's easy just to copy and paste these numbers if you kind of want to keep a record of network speed on different days or different times of the day. 
There's a second variation on this command that's networkquality dash v and this will do the same thing but it will actually do the download and upload test at the same time. It's interesting to compare these to see if your upload speed is faster if you're not downloading anything at the same time.
Now you can actually use the networkquality command without using Terminal at all thanks to the Shortcuts App. So it's easy to create a new shortcut here. We're going to search for an action that is Run Shell Script and add that in here. We can put the networkquality command with either dash v or dash s in here and then we can simply run it and it would output the result like that. Now note you don't get the feedback while it's running in Shortcuts like you would in Terminal. You just have to wait for the result to come out. But you can easily package this up into a shortcut that you can run without the Shortcut's App even being there. 
So let's go and search for Alert here and get Show Alert. Let's change the Alert to just delete that. We will insert variables, select the variable, and click on the Shell Script result there. Show More...we'll type a title like that. We don't need a cancel button here and now we can name this something like that. Go to the Settings here and add it to the Menu Bar. We can quit shortcuts and it will be here in the Menu Bar anytime we want to run it. It's not going to give us any feedback just like in Shortcuts so we just simply have to wait for it to finish running and then we'll get the result in a little Alert. There it is! If you're handy with shortcuts you can actually go in and maybe extract the upload and download speed and just have it output that or maybe copy it to the Clipboard as well.
Now it's important to note that your speed is going to vary depending upon a number of different factors. For instance, is your Mac doing something else now to download or upload files. Even if it's just checking for software updates or updating the data inside of an app it could slow things down temporarily and that's why you get different results even if you just check two minutes later. Also, of course, you probably have other devices on your network that are using the internet. Maybe you're not actually using the device right now but they could still be checking for various different things and doing updates. Also keep in mind that your network speed may be tied to everybody else in your neighborhood who is using all of the bandwidth at that given moment. Also note that some networks will throttle your bandwidth even if they don't admit that they do. So you start downloading a file and it goes rather quickly and then it slows down as you go because they are cutting the amount of bandwidth you've got once they notice you're using a lot of it right now. They say they are doing it to improve network quality for other people in your neighborhood. 
So just getting a quick reading on your network speed may not give you the true picture. Somebody with a slower speed than you can get that slower speed consistently with downloading a large file where you get a much faster speed when you start downloading but then it gets very slow later on. So there's a lot more to think about than just the results of a quick speed test like this. 
Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 16 Responses to “Test Your Network Speed On a Mac”

Andy

2 years ago

Many thanks, Gary.
This was very timely since my house has just been connected to our new city (municipal) fiber network called Connexion (1 Gig upload&download for $60/p/mo). In the past I've avoided Terminal for fear I'll screw something up--and not know how to undo the damage--but I'll try this because it will be interesting to track network speed (which should be way faster than what I've been getting from Comcast).

Kay Fisher

I loved it but... What I really would want is a graph I could see at any time that showed my network speeds over time. That is if there was a background task that captured this data at regular intervals while I am logged in and a simple GUI or short cut that could display it. Also it would be nice if it could be set to run at user determined intervals even when logged out. Results in a Numbers spread sheet. I should be capable of doing this, but it would be a stretch for me.

Gary Rosenzweig

Kay: That would take a lot of work to build. No easy way. Some WiFi routers do this so you may want to check if yours does.

Mark Scola

Hi Gary, I tried this in my Terminal but I keep getting "zsh: command not found" .... what do you make of that?

Rich

Gary, did I just see your internet speed showing both download and upload near the same? 89 and 56? How does one get that? Mine is currently 138 and 20. Always 5=8 times faster on download for me

Whoops I meant 89 and 86 ⇧⬆︎

Rick Grossman

This is data, that can be good to diagnose, but without a reference point it means little. When you get a medical test, it shows you the value, and the normal range. I know if my blood sugar is too high/low/normal. Also, where might the problem be? When streaming a video is it at the source, the internet, my router, my mac, my wifi, or the tv?

Mark: Are you using macOS Monterey, or something older?

Rich: I think this is common with DLS, but not with Cable. Which do you have?

Rick: What most people use this for is to compare it to what they pay for. So if you are paying for 100 Mbps from your provider, and you test it over and over at different times and never get above 50 Mpbs, then you'd want to call them and have them troubleshoot.

Art Caldara

Art: Are you perhaps using an older version of macOS?

Bob Earp

Doesn't work on Big Sur v11.6.5 Gary.
As a side note, I'm using cable in a rural area and often have a sloooow connection that mysteriously speeds up to my contract agreement speed after I run a speed test ;-)

Bob: Do you mean the Terminal command. No, it is new in Monterey. Use the website test if you haven't updated yet.

Mick

Brilliant tutorial Gary. Thank you. I'm a newbie to Shortcuts and Terminal so the content was perfect. This is exactly why I'm Patreon supporter :-) Regards Mick

Bruce

Great to learn the terminal command. Thanks. I'm amazed how many people do not understand the difference between the speed of their WiFi system vs. the speed provided by the ISP. People constantly complain to me about having slow "internet speed" when what they really have is slow WiFi.

Comments Closed.

Test Your Network Speed On a Mac

Comments: 16 Responses to “Test Your Network Speed On a Mac”

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