Dashboard

The Dashboard settings are where you enable and configure the Internet Dashboard — a real-time view of your internet latency, throughput, and connection health.

Enable Internet Dashboard — turns the Internet Dashboard on and shows it on the main display, displaying latency to your router, ISP, and endpoints on the internet. For what it shows, see Internet Dashboard.

Internet Hosts

PeakHour continually pings three hosts and aggregates the round-trip times into a combined view of internet latency. Choose services you use often.

Host 1, 2, 3 — the service to ping for each slot. Each dropdown offers a large list of popular services and DNS providers: Akamai, Amazon, Amazon AWS, Apple, Apple TV+, Cloudflare, Disney+, Fastly, GitHub, Google, Google Cloud, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Netflix, OpenDNS, PlayStation Network, Quad9, Reddit, Slack, Spotify, Steam, Twitch, X (Twitter), Xbox Live, YouTube, and Zoom. Choose None to leave a slot empty, or Custom… to enter your own hostname or IP address.

These hosts appear in the Internet segment’s popover on the dashboard, and on The Internet page of the PeakHour Advisor.

Network Quality

PeakHour can periodically measure your connection’s upload speed, download speed, and responsiveness using the macOS networkQuality tool, and show the results on the Internet Dashboard.

Setting	Description
Measure Network Quality	Enables periodic measurement. Results appear under ISP on the dashboard, in the Network Quality Report, and in the Advisor’s speed test history. Running a test also calibrates your Internet Gateway’s maximum available upload and download bandwidth.
Frequency	How often the test runs — every hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, day, or week.
Re-run when network change is detected	Also runs a test automatically whenever PeakHour detects a network change, such as switching Wi-Fi networks.
Network Quality Test → Run Now	Runs a test immediately. You can also right-click the Internet Dashboard and run it from there.

ISP Information

Lookup ISP Details — identifies your internet provider (name, ASN, connection type, and approximate location) from your public IP address, shown in the ISP segment’s popover on the dashboard. It also lets the PeakHour Advisor show the route to each site and a map of where each site answers from. It is off by default.

Clear Cached Data — removes the lookups that PeakHour has cached on this Mac.

For every service that ISP Information contacts, what each one receives, and what stays on your Mac, see ISP Information.

AI Advisor

AI Advisor — grades your connection and explains what holds it back, in the PeakHour Advisor window and on the dashboard. It is on by default, and needs macOS 26 or later.

Private Cloud Compute — lets a larger Apple model write the Advisor’s explanations, and lets you ask questions about your connection. It is off by default, and needs macOS 27 or later with Apple Intelligence. The line under the switch shows whether it is ready, and how much of today’s limit is left.

Note

Without Private Cloud Compute, the AI Advisor runs entirely on your Mac. With it, your measurements go to Apple’s servers, which don’t keep them. Your Wi-Fi name, your Mac’s name and the monitors you added stay on your Mac. See What leaves your Mac.

Notifications

Send a macOS notification when connectivity changes — both when a connection drops and when it comes back:

• Router becomes unreachable — notifies you when your router stops responding, and again when it recovers.
• Internet becomes unreachable — notifies you when the wider internet stops responding, and again when it recovers.

Visual Effects

Connection particle effects — animated particles flow along the connection lines between hops on the dashboard, visualising live traffic. Disable to turn the animation off.

Recreating Internet Dashboard monitors

If you delete one or more of the monitors that power the Internet Dashboard, the only way to restore them is to recreate them all:

1. Open Dashboard settings.
2. Disable the Internet Dashboard.
3. When prompted whether to delete all monitors associated with the Internet Dashboard, choose Yes, remove all Dashboard monitors.
4. Re-enable the Internet Dashboard.

This recreates all Internet Dashboard monitors with their default settings.