MultiPing

A small tool that pings a list of hosts once a second and shows, per host, the current round-trip time, session min / median / avg / max, a bar graph of the last 60 seconds, and a histogram of the session's round trips.

It runs on Windows (XP SP3 and later), macOS (11 and later) and Linux (GTK 3, Qt 5 or Qt 6), with the same look everywhere and no extra dependencies.

Which program?

	Runs on	Built with	Size
MultiPing.exe	64-bit Windows 7 SP1 and later	MSVC 14.44, current UCRT, static	about 313 KB
MultiPingXP.exe	32- and 64-bit Windows XP SP3 and later	MinGW-w64 GCC (MSYS2 mingw32), msvcrt.dll	about 521 KB
multiping-gtk	Linux with GTK 3: Debian 12, Ubuntu 24.04 and later	g++ in Debian bookworm	about 164 KB
multiping-qt5	Linux with Qt 5.15	g++ in Debian bookworm	about 176 KB
multiping-qt6	Linux with Qt 6.4 or later	g++ in Debian bookworm	about 184 KB
MultiPing.app	macOS 11 and later, Apple silicon and Intel	Apple clang, AppKit	about 403 KB

The two Windows builds behave identically; every version-dependent feature is resolved at runtime, and the XP build is the more portable of the two. On Linux, pick the kit the desktop uses: GTK on GNOME, Qt on KDE.

Usage

• Type a host name or IPv4/IPv6 address into a row and press Enter (or click elsewhere) to start pinging it.
• The Notes box beside it takes a name or anything else worth knowing about the host.
• The list always ends with an empty row for the next address. Filling it in adds another empty row below.
• Enter moves to the next row's address; Tab / Shift+Tab move through the boxes, the address then the notes.
• Escape reverts an edited box. The red circle at the right deletes the row.
• Drag the dots at a row's left up or down to move the row; dragged above or below the rows shown, the list scrolls along.
• Stats (min / median / avg / max) cover the whole session for that address; the graph shows the last 60 pings, one per second, with timeouts drawn in red; the histogram shows how the session's replies are spread, from 0 at its left edge to the scale at its right, which holds all but the slowest 1 % (those are counted in the last column). A session takes the same memory however long it runs.
• The window opens sized for 8 rows; a scrollbar appears only when there are more.
• The rows are saved to addresses.txt on every change and on exit, in %APPDATA%\MultiPing on Windows, ~/.config/MultiPing on Linux and ~/Library/Application Support/MultiPing on macOS: a line per row, the address, then a tab and the notes when there are any.
• The window size and position are saved to window.txt in the same folder and restored on the next start, clamped to the current screen if the display layout has changed. Under Wayland only the size is restored, as the window system places windows itself.
• The window follows the system's light or dark mode, also when it changes while the window is open: the app mode on Windows 10 1809 and later, the appearance on macOS, and the GTK or Qt theme on Linux.

Pinging needs no privileges.

On Linux, it uses ICMP datagram sockets where net.ipv4.ping_group_range allows them (systemd's default), and runs the system's ping where it does not (Ubuntu 24.04).

On macOS, the first start asks for Local Network access, which pinging hosts on the LAN needs.

MultiPing.app is ad-hoc signed but not notarized, so macOS refuses to open a downloaded copy the first time. Allow it with Open Anyway under System Settings › Privacy & Security (on macOS 14 and earlier, Control-click the app and choose Open), or clear its quarantine flag in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine MultiPing.app.

Building

Windows: build.bat produces MultiPing.exe, a 64-bit build that requires Windows 7 SP1 or later, statically linked against the C Runtime; its only imports are user32, gdi32, kernel32, iphlpapi and ws2_32. build_mingw.bat produces MultiPingXP.exe, a 32-bit build that runs on Windows XP SP3 and later, using MinGW-w64 GCC from MSYS2's mingw32 environment (i686, linked against msvcrt.dll, static libgcc and libstdc++).

Linux: build_linux.sh produces multiping-gtk, multiping-qt5 and multiping-qt6 in Docker's Debian bookworm (build_linux.Dockerfile, built on first use), so they need nothing newer than glibc 2.36, GTK 3.24, Qt 5.15 and Qt 6.4. build_linux.sh --native builds with the machine's own g++ for whichever of GTK 3, Qt 5 and Qt 6 pkg-config finds.

macOS: build_macos.sh produces MultiPing.app, a universal (arm64 and x86_64) app with the Xcode command line tools, ad-hoc signed.