How can I see how fast data is being transferred in Mac OS X?

Question

Is there a simple way to measure how the upload or download speed of data leaving my computer, like when I'm backing up the computer, or uploading large files through a browser?

If so, how can I do this?

Solution 1

Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder will show network usage, disk usage and many other things. You can sort by process as well.

Solution 2

MenuMeters - sits in your menu bar showing a constant graph and/or numeric values for upload & download on any interface.

Solution 3

You can do it using iStat pro. It shows you how many GB you've downloaded and uploaded since you booted up.

Solution 4

For El Capitan and after, the wonderful Menu Meters listed above no longer works. However, there's a fork of it available which does support El Capitan and adds some new features.

Solution 5

In addition to iStat Pro, Little Snitch will also do this. Little Snitch also provides reverse firewall protection, making sure you know which applications are connecting to the internet.

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Comments

[Assaf Levy]

+1. iStat Pro is a nice widget, and perfectly fulfills my simple network monitoring needs (occasionally checking the current upload/download rate)

[Richard Hoskins]

In this case though, it does not do anything more than the Activity Monitor, which is already installed.

[Assaf Levy]

@Richard, perhaps so, but in my experience it's quicker/handier to access the info from iStat Pro, by just opening Dashboard

[Richard Hoskins]

@Jonik Not by the time you download, install, update, etc. If there is a good reason to install an application, I'll install one. But it comes at a price, so I prefer to use the tools I already have. iStat Pro just to look at network numbers is not going to save you time.

[alex]

It shows you all the data you might want at a glance. And I'm no sure you can find info on battery cycles, fan RPM and temperature in Activity monitor. That is why I recommended iStat.