NetPulse — Live Ping & Speed Test by NetStartr

About

NetPulse turns your browser toolbar into a live internet-quality monitor.

A small coloured dot tells you at a glance whether your connection is healthy:

• Green — ping under 50 ms (everything feels great)
• Yellow — 50 to 150 ms (calls and games may stutter)
• Red — over 150 ms (you'll feel it everywhere)
• Grey — connection lost

The exact ping value is shown in the badge so you don't have to hover.

Click the icon to open a tiny popup with one button: "Run full speed test →".
That opens netstartr.com with the test auto-starting — measuring your download,
upload, ping, jitter, packet loss and a stability score in around 20 seconds.
No signup, no app install, no ads during the test.

— Why NetPulse —

★ Always-on monitoring without burning bandwidth
  We ping Cloudflare's global edge with a tiny 0-byte HEAD request every few
  seconds. Negligible data use, no impact on your Wi-Fi or mobile cap.

★ Configurable thresholds
  Don't agree with the defaults? Open the popup, change the green/yellow cutoffs
  to whatever makes sense for your line, and the icon recolours instantly.

★ Optional offline alerts
  Turn on a single checkbox and you'll get a desktop notification the moment
  your connection drops or comes back. Perfect for flaky home Wi-Fi or hotel
  networks.

★ Built for gamers, streamers and remote workers
  If you've ever wondered "is the lag me or my internet?", NetPulse answers it
  before you even open a tab.

★ Genuinely free
  No subscription, no premium tier, no account. The full source is open and
  auditable.

— Privacy, plainly —

NetPulse only contacts speed.cloudflare.com to measure latency. It does NOT:
• read the pages you visit
• track your browsing history
• send anything to NetStartr's own servers
• show ads inside the popup

Your threshold preferences are stored locally in chrome.storage. Nothing
leaves your device. Full privacy policy: https://netstartr.com/privacy

— Permissions, in plain English —

• storage — remembers your colour-threshold preferences
• alarms — schedules the periodic ping (every ~6 seconds)
• notifications — only used if you tick the "alert me on offline" box
• Host permission for speed.cloudflare.com — the only network destination

— Companion site —

NetPulse pairs with NetStartr (https://netstartr.com), a free internet speed
test with extras the big guys don't have:

• Stability score combining jitter and packet loss into one number
• "Am I getting what I pay for?" comparison against your ISP plan
• Connection quality badges (4K, gaming, calls)
• Local test history (10 most recent, no account)
• Shareable result image with stability bar and plan percentage

— Browsers —

Built on Manifest V3. Works on Chrome 108+, Microsoft Edge, Brave and Arc.

— Feedback & open source —

Source code, bug reports and feature requests:
https://github.com/netstartr/netpulse

Email: [email protected]