For gamers
Kilobat pings every CS2, Dota 2, Deadlock and Fortnite data center and names the one closest to you. When a match still stutters, it finds the spikes a speed test averages away, says what causes them, and puts your live ping on stream so chat knows it wasn’t you.
brew install seifip/kilobat/kilobat
Game servers
Open Speed › Game servers, pick the game and click Ping servers. Kilobat pings every data center five times, lists them by ping with jitter and loss, puts the closest one on top as Best for you, and says how much your ping rises while the line is busy.
It’s ping to the region’s data center, not your exact match server, so the game may show a few milliseconds more. Valorant, League of Legends and Apex Legends publish no server that answers a ping, so Kilobat leaves them out rather than guess. Free, in the app and as kilobat games.
A speed test measures how much fits through the line in ten seconds. A match needs every packet on time, all the time. These are the usual suspects, and how Kilobat catches each one.
AirDrop and Handoff scanning: the Mac’s radio hops channels to look for nearby devices.
The stutter test pings every 50 ms and says when spikes repeat on a beat. Then pause AirDrop, Sidecar and Universal Control until the game quits: from the menu bar with Pro, or free with kilobat low-latency. Free
Bufferbloat: a backup, a cloud folder or your stream fills the router’s queue, and every packet waits behind it.
The speed test measures ping while downloading and uploading, so bufferbloat shows as a number. The menu bar names the app that’s uploading. Free
A launcher or macOS update started on its own.
Live upload and download for every app in the menu bar. A Pro profile keeps everything but the game and its voice chat offline. Free
Weak or crowded Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz, a far router, or every neighbour on your channel.
Run the stutter test against the router, then the internet, to see which side the spikes come from. Free
The Wi-Fi link itself: signal, noise or a slow band.
Signal radar scores your Wi-Fi as you move the laptop, and channel crowding names a quieter channel for your router. Pro
Streaming overlay
The streaming overlay is a small pill for OBS, Streamlabs or any streaming app: live ping, jitter, loss and the last minute as a line. The bat at its start smiles in blue while the line is good, turns violet when it slows and frowns when it’s poor. When chat says you’re lagging, they can see whether it was the internet.
http://localhost:7171/ as a Browser Source. It updates once a second, and only this Mac can open it.Free. With Pro, hide the wordmark or swap the bat for a plain dot. Every URL option.
Stutter test
Twenty seconds of pings, 20 a second, drawn as a strip. Kilobat says whether the spikes come on a beat (AirDrop), at random (Wi-Fi or congestion) or not at all, and compares the run before and after a low-latency pause so you can see the difference.
# 20 seconds of pings to find the spikes
$ kilobat stutter --target internet
# The closest CS2 region and its ping
$ kilobat games --game cs2
# Pause AirDrop until the game quits (free in the CLI)
$ kilobat low-latency on --until-quit "Counter-Strike 2"Will this call hold up? A speed test for capacity, and a stutter test for the short spikes that speed tests average away.
low-latency, stutter and gamesPro is $19 once for two Macs, with a 7-day free trial and 14-day refunds. Free for students.
Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Deadlock and Fortnite, every region. Valorant, League of Legends and Apex Legends publish no server that answers a ping, and the addresses passed around online no longer answer or can’t be confirmed, so they’re left out rather than faked. For them, the stutter test and the overlay’s internet ping still show what your line is doing.
Close. Kilobat measures to the region’s data center; the game measures to your match server inside it, and some games count a little processing time too. Comparing regions with each other is what it’s for.
Yes. GeForce Now, Xbox Cloud Gaming and similar services are sensitive to exactly the spikes and loss Kilobat measures. Run the stutter test against the internet, then against your router, to see which side they come from.
Yes. The menu bar shows live upload and download for every app, free. With Pro, a profile can keep everything but the game and its voice chat offline.
Game server ping, the stutter test, speed test, live traffic and the streaming overlay are free. The in-app low-latency pause, blocking and history are part of Pro, $19 once, with a 7-day free trial.
brew install seifip/kilobat/kilobat