PeakHour 6: real-time Internet monitoring in your Mac menu bar, now with an on-device AI advisor

Hi r/macapps 👋 I'm Ed, I make PeakHour, and version 6 was released today! 🥳

Some of you have been here long enough to remember where this started. In 2012 I posted a tiny app called Examinet: it read SNMP counters off your router, drew them in the menu bar, and cost $2.99. It became PeakHour in 2013, PeakHour 4 in 2017, PeakHour 5 last year. Fourteen years later I'm still building the same app, mostly because I still want it on my own Mac.

Problem

Your call stutters. Your Mac says nothing. Was it your Wi-Fi, your router, your ISP, or the guy on the other end sitting in a basement? PeakHour lives in the menu bar and watches all of it live: the Wi-Fi link, the router, the ISP, and the path out to the rest of the internet. It keeps the history too, so when the internet falls over at 2pm you can point at the exact minute. Weirdly satisfying on a call with your provider.

What's new in 6

https://preview.redd.it/uje4htmidzph1.png?width=1508&format=png&auto=webp&s=278827a6adc68cca9699b4057ab5b0824c769ca9

Built for macOS 27 Golden Gate. Liquid Glass dashboard, fluid sphere gauges, the lot. Still happy on macOS 14.6 or above if you are in no rush to update.
AI Network Advisor. It grades your connection A+ to F, then says why in plain English, including whether calls, gaming and streaming will be smooth. The numbers are your own measurements. The words are written on your Mac by Apple Intelligence, so nothing about your network goes anywhere.
Wi-Fi Intelligence: signal, noise, channel and transmit rate.
History charts that scroll back through weeks.
Routers that discover themselves over UPnP, or SNMP if you have credentials.
An alert the moment the connection drops, and another when it comes back.

Comparison

iStat Menus is the one people usually mention, and it is genuinely great. I run it too. It watches the machine: CPU, memory, sensors, and the traffic on your Mac's own network interface. PeakHour looks the other way, outward. It measures the router, the ISP and the hops beyond, so it can tell you the stutter started past your front door. It also remembers every outage, and it explains the numbers instead of only drawing them.

Bandwidth+ is the other one worth naming. It counts the data you have used, which really matters on a capped plan. PeakHour answers a different question: is this connection healthy right now, and if not, whose fault is it?

Pricing

Free to try, no account, no sign up. After that $19.99/year, or $59.99 once for a lifetime licence, whichever suits you. Own PeakHour 4? There is 20% off at checkout.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/peakhour-internet-monitor/id1560576252?mt=12

Giveaway 🎁

I have 10 lifetime licences to hand out. Leave a comment with a thought, a question, or something you wish PeakHour did, and I will DM codes to 10 of you. Complaints count. Those are usually the useful ones.

Codes go out tomorrow to the ten most useful comments. Questions, feature requests and complaints all count.

Requirements

macOS 14.6 or later. The AI Advisor needs macOS 26 or later and a Mac with Apple Intelligence. Everything else works without it.

No account, no analytics or tracking SDKs, no telemetry.

Screenshots and detail: https://peakhour.app

I'll be around all day, so ask me anything. The feedback I would most like is on the Advisor: does the explanation tell you something the graphs do not, or does it read like filler? Honest answers welcome, I can take it.

Edit: It is late here, so I'm turning in for the night. I will reply to every new comment in the morning, and the codes go out then as well. Thanks for all the excellent questions tonight, please keep them coming and I will get to all of them on the flip. 🌜

https://redd.it/1wic5ic
@macappsbackup

StemKit: split any YouTube song into stems, fully local, no account

https://redd.it/1wijsmn
@macappsbackup

DockFlow - Switch between setups & dock presets in an instant

https://redd.it/1wimy24
@macappsbackup

The Grifting Browser
https://redd.it/1winvg9
@macappsbackup

[Source Available] KiwiDesk: a tiling window manager that feels like it shipped with macOS

https://redd.it/1wiq936
@macappsbackup

Notsy: yet another note app but this one is just wee lil better 🦦

https://redd.it/1wiu0s3
@macappsbackup

I built a Mac file converter that runs 2,748 conversions, entirely offline [Giveaway: 10 lifetime licences]

https://redd.it/1wiso4i
@macappsbackup

I made a 3D Mac window switcher with browser tab support and search

https://redd.it/1wiwyyx
@macappsbackup

Raycast alternatives: Tinycast or Vicinae?

I want to move away from Raycast to a different launcher but keep my extensions, etc.
Now, I've recently seen Tinycast being mentioned a lot as a great, new alternative, but others have also mentioned Vicinae as a (better) alternative, as it's more established and has been around for longer. I would really appreciate if anyone who used/uses one of them or both could chime in and give their recommendation.
Thank you very much in advance.

https://redd.it/1wizhun
@macappsbackup

TidyMind: on-device AI file organizer for Mac. Plans before moving, renames messy files. Free to try

https://redd.it/1wj0sx2
@macappsbackup

Cosmil 2.3: Remote Location Support (SFTP, FTP, SMB, WebDAV), Free Trial, Theming, and more

https://redd.it/1wiy4zp
@macappsbackup

Update: my free floating AI assistant for macOS
https://redd.it/1wjc0ha
@macappsbackup

Koi Editor Alpha: A fast, native code editor for macOS

https://redd.it/1wjgtos
@macappsbackup

A few ways to introduce the rules

This subreddit is one of the best ways to market an app as of now.

However I’ve noticed a few apps just wait a month and just post the exact same app. No new features or no new updates. Whereas some pass that have gotten a bunch of big updates need to wait 30 days (I do agree there should be a minimum time)

So here’s my proposed solution:
\- Minimum days before next post becomes 20 days, but there’s an additional requirement:
\- minimum of 5-6 new features (bug fixes don’t count, and ofc “adding a new colour” wouldn’t count. ) (the number is just an example)

Both of these should be enforced together, so an app can’t just be reposted again after 20 days and maybe only 1 or 2 features added.

Open to feedback as usual.

https://redd.it/1wjbium
@macappsbackup

PDF Owl: new approach to the annotation list (ToC centered)

https://redd.it/1wiva5i
@macappsbackup