If you are anything like me, you’d like to see your internet speed in real-time. This is helpful in many ways. For instance, you will instantly know if the internet connection is slow or if some other app is using it in the background. Thankfully, using the toolbars feature in the taskbar, you can add a bandwidth monitoring widget to the taskbar in Windows 10. This widget can show real-time download and upload speed in the bitrate of your choice. So, without further ado, let me show you how to show internet speed on the taskbar in Windows 10.
The below method work in older version of Windows like 7 and 8 too.
See Download and Upload Speeds on Taskbar
Windows 10 has no built-in options or official app to show the download and upload speeds on the taskbar. However, we can use a free and light-weight application called NetSpeedMonitor to see bandwidth usage on the taskbar. I’ve been using the NetSpeedMonitor for years and it just works perfectly without any hiccups, intrusions, or other problems.
1. First, download NetSpeedMonitor.
2. Since the application has not been updated in a long while, we need to run it in compatibility mode. If you try to run the application as is, you will see “Operating system not supported error”. It’s not a big deal as running the app in compatibility mode does the magic. So, right-click on the downloaded exe file and select “Properties”.
3. In the properties window, go to the “Compatibility” tab. Here, select the checkbox “Run this program in compatibility mode for” and then select the “Previous version of Windows” option. Click on the “Apply” and “Ok” buttons to save the changes.
4. Now, install the NetSpeedMonitor like any other Windows application.
5. After installing, NetSpeedMonitor will prompt whether you’d like to add the bandwidth monitoring toolbar to the taskbar. Click on the “Yes” button.
6. You will be taken to the configuration window. Here, select your preferred language, your active network adapter and hit the “Save” button.
7. As soon as you hit the save button, you will a new download and upload speed toolbar appears to the right-hand side of the taskbar.
8. By default, NetSpeedMonitor uses Kbit (Kilobits) to measure the incoming and outgoing traffic speed. If you want to, you can change it to Mbit (Megabits). This is pretty helpful because almost all ISPs report their speed in Megabits/second. To do that, right-click on the bandwidth toolbar and select “Configuration”.
9. In the General tab, select “Mbit/s” from the drop-down menu next to “Bitrate” and hit the “Apply” button. If you want to, you can also change the decimal level by changing the “Precision” level.
10. As soon as you save the changes, you will see that the bandwidth monitor toolbar is using megabits per second to measure upload and download speed in real-time.
11. Under the layout tab, you can change the font family, font size, and toolbar alignment.
12. When you hover over the toolbar, it will show a quick glance of your previous day’s total bandwidth consumption. This is useful, however, if you feel this feature a distraction, simply uncheck the “Enable toolbar tooltip” under the Tooltip tab.
13. If you want to reset the configuration, simply click on the “Reset” button under the “Advanced” tab and you are good to go.
14. Finally, if you don’t want the toolbar on your taskbar, right-click on the taskbar, go to “Toolbars” and uncheck “NetSpeedMonitor”. This action will remove the toolbar from the taskbar. Of course, you can also uninstall NetSpeedMonitor from the Settings app or Control Panel.
As you can see, it is rather simple to show download and upload speeds on the taskbar in Windows 10. If you like this article, do check out how to pin any folder to the taskbar and how to make the taskbar fully transparent.
