PingCube

A tiny, always-on-top connectivity cube and macOS Menu Bar monitor that replaces a continuous ping 8.8.8.8 terminal window with at-a-glance RTT latency, jitter, packet loss, and a 25-ping color-coded sparkline.

Why?

Instead of keeping a terminal window running ping 8.8.8.8 open all day to spot Wi-Fi/ISP latency spikes or dropped packets:

PingCube stays tucked in the corner of your screen (and macOS Menu Bar) using almost zero memory:

• Green (GOOD): RTT < 40 ms, jitter < 15 ms, 0% recent packet loss
• Orange (OK-ISH): RTT 40–100 ms, jitter >= 15 ms, or recovering from a recent drop
• Red (BAD / TIMEOUT): RTT > 100 ms or packet timeout (flashes bright red on packet loss)

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Option 1: Native macOS App (PingCube.swift)

Zero dependencies, ~20 MB RAM, borderless 138×138 px floating cube across all macOS Spaces + live Menu Bar indicator (🟢 18ms).

# Compile standalone binary:
swiftc -O PingCube.swift -o PingCube
./PingCube

# Or build a double-clickable PingCube.app bundle (no Dock / Cmd+Tab icon):
./build_mac_app.sh
open PingCube.app

• Left-click the Menu Bar item (🟢 18ms) to hide/show the floating cube.
• Right-click the Menu Bar item or the cube itself to Pause/Resume, Reset 60s stats, or Quit.
• Drag anywhere on the cube to reposition it.

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Option 2: Terminal TUI Cube (ping_cube.py)

Zero dependencies (Python 3 standard library), ~5 MB RAM, works on macOS and Linux.

python3 ping_cube.py

• Hotkeys: p Pause/Resume · r Reset stats · q Quit

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Custom Thresholds & Target Host

Both versions accept the same flags:

./PingCube --host 8.8.8.8 --warn 40 --bad 100 --jitter-warn 15
python3 ping_cube.py --host 8.8.8.8 --warn 40 --bad 100 --jitter-warn 15