Finish the glance. 2.0 put a rock-solid speed readout on your taskbar. 2.1 makes it tell you which network you're on — not just how fast — plays nicer with the rest of the Windows shell, reaches three new languages (including its first right-to-left one), and tidies up how the widget sits next to the tray.
Install: winget install --id erez-c137.NetSpeedTray, or grab the Setup / Portable below. Both are digitally signed — no SmartScreen warnings.
See which Wi-Fi network you're on — the band Windows hides
There's a new optional indicator that shows your Wi-Fi band — 2.4G / 5G / 6G — right on the widget, as a small pill next to your speed. It's the one piece of connection info Windows makes you dig through Settings to find, and it answers the everyday question: "did my PC quietly rejoin the slow 2.4 GHz network after the last reconnect?"
Turn it on in Settings → Network → Network identity, and pick how it looks:
- Always — a neat neutral pill.
- Color-coded —
2.4Gamber,5Ggreen,6Gblue, so quality reads at a glance. - Alert only — the widget stays clean, and a red
2.4Gappears only when you've dropped to the slow band. Nothing to see means you're fine.
You can also show the network name (SSID) alongside the band — the name and band tuck into a single rounded capsule.
A note on the Location permission — because a network monitor asking for "Location" deserves one
The band needs no permission at all. The network name (SSID) is different: since Windows 11, Windows only hands the network name to apps that have Location access. So if you choose to show the name, NetSpeedTray asks you to turn Location on — and a one-time explainer makes clear exactly what that means. This is a Windows privacy gate, not GPS and not tracking: NetSpeedTray never uses your position, reads the name locally only to display it, and never stores or sends it anywhere. Prefer not to? Leave the name off and keep the band — it works everywhere with nothing to enable. (Full detail in the Privacy Policy.)
Windows menus stay put — no more hiding behind the taskbar
If you ran NetSpeedTray, you may have noticed the bottom row of certain Windows menus slipping behind the taskbar — the taskbar right-click Close, the Safely remove hardware device list, app jump lists. That's fixed. To stay above the taskbar the widget had been re-asserting its "top-most" position on a timer, which as a side effect kept dragging the taskbar itself up over whatever menu was open. It now holds its place structurally, without that re-assert, so your menus render fully every time. (#200)
Works on displays that have no taskbar of their own
Got an accessory panel like the Corsair Xeneon Edge, or any secondary display Windows leaves without a taskbar? Point NetSpeedTray at it as your Preferred Monitor and the widget now free-floats at the bottom of that screen instead of snapping back to your main taskbar. It holds its spot across sleep/wake and monitor changes, and you can drag it anywhere on that display. (#188)
Three new languages — including right-to-left
- Hebrew (
he_IL) — NetSpeedTray's first right-to-left language. Turn it on in Settings → Language and the whole app mirrors: Settings, the Monitor, and menus flip right-to-left, and the history graph renders Hebrew correctly (no reversed text, no missing glyphs). The taskbar readout itself stays left-to-right — it's almost all digits and units, where LTR reads best. Started by @rami123; the rest is an AI-assisted first pass, so a native-speaker review is very welcome — one-line corrections are credited. (See TRANSLATORS.md.) - Simplified Chinese (
zh_CN) — contributed by @RainThings, a much-requested addition for mainland users. (#209) - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) (
zh_TW) — contributed by @raylolhue with terminology improvements from @in2002-tw and native punctuation/phrasing polish from @tony8077616. (#199, #215) - Japanese (
ja_JP) and Korean (ko_KR) got refreshes from @coolvitto (#205) and @VenusGirl (#207).
Portable updates that actually update
On the portable ZIP build, "Download Update" used to launch the installer — which can't update an unzipped folder in place, so nothing happened. The portable build now runs a guided update: it downloads the new version, verifies the whole download's checksum against the official release, extracts it, and opens it ready for you to copy over your folder. Your settings live in %APPDATA%, so they're untouched. (#195)
A tidier fit next to the tray
- The widget no longer crowds the "show hidden icons" (∧) button. It used to sit flush against the chevron, making it fiddly to click; now it keeps a small gap so the button stays fully clickable. (#161)
- No stray gap to the tray. In Cycle mode and the single-metric (CPU-only / GPU-only) layouts, a narrower reading could leave empty space between the widget and the tray. Every mode now hugs the tray edge, with the spare width tucked away toward the app icons where you can't see it. (#106)
- A heads-up if the widget overlaps the Windows Widgets/weather panel. Move the Start button left and Windows shifts its Widgets button right — under where the readout likes to sit. NetSpeedTray now shows a one-time nudge if the two overlap. It never moves your widget for you; drag it aside or leave it, your call. (#200)
Other fixes & polish
- Scrolling the Settings window no longer changes the control under your cursor. Wheeling down a page used to nudge whatever slider or dropdown you scrolled past (font size, colours, thresholds). Pages now scroll cleanly; a control only responds to the wheel once you click into it.
- Pinned to a second monitor, the widget could land on the clock. On a secondary display whose taskbar has no system tray of its own, the default position could overlap that monitor's date/time. It now leaves room for the clock — and dragging it once still remembers your exact spot. (#186)
- No more runaway logging on taskbar-less monitor setups: a fallback note that was written to the log every second (bloating logs and Support Bundles) now logs once per change. (#191)
Thank you to everyone who shaped 2.1.0 💙
Translators — @raylolhue, @in2002-tw & @tony8077616 (Traditional Chinese), @RainThings (Simplified Chinese), @coolvitto (Japanese), @VenusGirl (Korean), and @rami123 (Hebrew).
Testing & reports — @CMTriX (who found and confirmed a whole batch of these), plus @un99known99, @bugreportingL, and @7OH for confirming the taskbar-menu fix.
The network-name idea started as a Reddit ask, and your multi-monitor and menu-behind-the-taskbar reports made those fixes possible.
Full changelog: https://github.com/erez-c137/NetSpeedTray/blob/main/changelog.md
