Frequently asked questions

It’s an app that checks whether network services respond. Each service is a host (a name or an IP address) and a TCP port — for example a router, NAS or printer on your network, or a web server on the Internet. myNetWorking connects to them from your device at the interval you set and shows their status and response time. When a service stops working, it records an incident and can raise an alarm. Before it does that, it checks whether your device has Internet access at all.

Yes. myNetWorking is free on all platforms — no ads, in-app purchases, subscriptions or account. It also doesn’t collect data about you or about how you use it.

It checks whether the web server accepts connections on the given port, usually 443. It doesn’t download the page and doesn’t check the HTTP status code, the content or the validity of the TLS certificate. If the server accepts connections but the page shows an error, the service still has the “Online” status.

Ping (ICMP) only tells you that a device responds. A TCP connection to a specific port checks whether the service you care about is working — a web server, file sharing, printing. Many devices and networks also block ping. myNetWorking establishes the connection and closes it right away, without sending any data. The number of milliseconds next to a service is the time it took to establish that connection — for host names, including the DNS lookup.

Enter the port of a service that you know runs on the device. The most common ones:

If you don’t know which port is open, check the device’s documentation or its admin panel.

The app takes only the host name from the address — the path, the parameters and any port in the address are dropped. For example, https://status.example.com/health?full=true becomes status.example.com, and http://192.168.1.1/admin becomes 192.168.1.1. The port does not follow from the https:// prefix, so enter it yourself in the Port field (usually 443 or 80).

The app speaks Polish, English, German and Spanish. By default it uses the system language, and if the system uses a different language, English. You change the language in Settings → General → Language; the change takes effect immediately, also for older log entries and for notifications. The app takes its light or dark appearance from the system settings — there is no separate switch.

“DOWN” means that the service didn’t answer twice in a row, while your connection was working both before and after the second attempt. Only then is an incident created and the alarm goes off.

“No network” means that the problem is on your side: the device has no Internet, the connection is unstable, 30 seconds haven’t yet passed since connection trouble, or DNS failed. The app records this in the log, but doesn’t create an incident or turn on the alarm.

The most common reasons:

• One of the reference servers that answered earlier has stopped answering — for the app, this is a sign of an unstable connection.

• 30 seconds haven’t yet passed since connection trouble.

• The service’s host name has suddenly stopped resolving in DNS.

• Your network blocks connections to the reference servers on port 53, which happens on corporate networks.

In the last case, add your own servers in Settings → Reference servers — servers that you know are reachable from your network.

So that a momentary glitch doesn’t end in a false alarm. After the first failed attempt, the app checks the connection, then immediately connects to the service a second time, and after the second failure it checks the connection once more. The “DOWN” status appears only if both attempts failed and the connection was working the whole time. A single lost response or a short Wi-Fi dropout therefore doesn’t set off an alarm.

With the default settings, within the check interval (30 seconds) plus up to about 20 seconds of verification. A service that is stopped on a running host, which refuses the connection immediately, is detected almost instantly at the next check. During an outage, the service is checked every 10 seconds, so its recovery also shows up quickly. Want to check a service right now? Open it and click Save — there is no separate “check now” button.

Click the red crossed-out bell, Acknowledge alarm, next to the service — in the list it is next to the status, and in the icons view it is in the top-left corner of the tile. The service still has the “DOWN” status and the incident continues, but the alarm goes quiet. The alarm also ends by itself when the service recovers, when you pause the service or when you turn off its Repeat alarm until acknowledged option. You can’t acknowledge it from the notification.

Watch out for a similar name: Acknowledge incident in the incident menu on the Incidents tab only marks the incident as reviewed and doesn’t stop the alarm.

Open the service, turn off Monitoring enabled and click Save. The service gets the “Paused” status and its alarm stops. An ongoing incident is closed. When you turn monitoring back on, the service is checked immediately. A paused service stays in the list together with its incident history. If you want to delete it, use the trash icon in the service editor — its incidents are then deleted too, but its log entries remain.

Yes. The app uses the system’s connections, so it checks services reachable through a VPN like any others, and it resolves host names through the DNS configured in the system. When the VPN tunnel disconnects, the services on the other side that you entered as an IP address get the “DOWN” status if the Internet is working. Services entered as a name that only the VPN’s DNS resolves may get the “No network” status instead, because the app treats a name that suddenly stops resolving as a network problem — and no alarm goes off. So it’s better to enter services behind a VPN as IP addresses. If the VPN or corporate network blocks connections to public reference servers on port 53, add servers that are reachable on your network in Settings → Reference servers. It’s also worth monitoring the VPN gateway itself as a separate service.

Yes, with one caveat. Services that answer have the “Online” status. When one of them stops answering, the default reference servers are unreachable too, so the app shows “No network” instead of “DOWN” and doesn’t turn on the alarm. On such a network, add a device that is always running on it in Settings → Reference servers, e.g. the router on port 80 or 443. Public servers that have never answered are not taken into account.

• macOS and Windows: yes. The app stays in the menu bar or the system tray. You quit it with Quit in the icon menu (on a Mac, also with ⌘Q).

• Linux: yes. Closing the window minimizes it. You quit the app in Settings → General → Quit myNetWorking or with Ctrl+Q.

• Android: yes, thanks to the foreground service with a permanent notification.

• iPhone and iPad: only periodically — details below.

Yes, on macOS 13 and later, on Windows and on Linux: turn on Settings → General → Launch at system startup. On Windows, the app uses a Microsoft Store startup task — you’ll see the entry in Task Manager → Startup apps. On Linux, it creates a file in the ~/.config/autostart folder. On macOS 12, this option doesn’t work. Android and iPhone don’t have this option: after you restart the phone, open the app.

iOS doesn’t let apps run continuously in the background. myNetWorking monitors fully while it is open. In the background, the system runs checks only from time to time — roughly every 15 minutes, with no guarantee — and it is the system that decides when. In each such round, the app checks all enabled services once, records incidents and sends notifications about changes. If a service is still “DOWN” and its repeating alarm has not been acknowledged, the outage notification comes again in every round. For continuous monitoring, leave the app open or use a computer. A message on the Services tab reminds you of this; you can close it.

• Allow notifications (Android 13 and later asks for this at first launch).

• Turn off battery optimization for myNetWorking in the app’s system settings.

• After you restart the phone, open the app once.

The permanent “myNetWorking is monitoring” notification shows that the foreground service that keeps monitoring going in the background is running. It is visible as long as at least one service has monitoring enabled. However, if Android or the phone manufacturer’s task manager shuts down the app’s whole process, the system may bring back only the notification — services are then not checked until you open the app again.

Since version 1.1.0, background monitoring has no daily time limit of the kind that Android 15 places on data sync services.

Since version 1.1.0, just as on macOS: when a service goes down, a notification with sound appears, and when it comes back, a second one tells you the connection has been restored. The service’s alarm settings — Show notification, Play sound, Repeat alarm until acknowledged and Alarm repeat interval (seconds) — work as on the other systems, and Alert when the Internet is down adds separate notifications when the Internet connection is lost and when it comes back.

• Permission: Windows doesn’t ask for it — notifications work right away. You can turn them off in the Windows settings: Settings → System → Notifications → myNetWorking (on Windows 10: System → Notifications & actions). The app then keeps monitoring: statuses, incidents and the log work as usual.

• Sound: an outage plays the Windows reminder sound, which stands out from ordinary notifications. Recoveries and the Internet notifications play the default notification sound, and with Play sound turned off the notification is silent.

• Appearance: these are ordinary Windows notifications. The banner disappears after a few seconds, and the notification stays in the notification center. A repeated alarm comes back at the interval you set until you click the Acknowledge alarm bell in the app.

• Clicking a notification brings the app window back, even from the system tray. If you quit the app with Quit, clicking the notification in the notification center starts it again.

• Do not disturb: while it is on, Windows shows no banners and plays no sound — notifications only go to the notification center.

GNOME shows tray icons only with the AppIndicator extension. Ubuntu has it built in; on Debian and Fedora, install the gnome-shell-extension-appindicator package and enable the extension. Without the icon, the app works normally — the closed window is minimized, and you quit the app in the settings or with Ctrl+Q. More on the Installation page.

No. After an update — from the store or from a new file from this site — your service list, settings, incidents and log remain. They are removed only when you delete them in the app or uninstall the app together with its data. The Updates chapter describes how to update the versions from this site.

We recommend the Mac App Store — the app then updates automatically. The .dmg file from this site is for people who don’t use the App Store: it is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, and you check for new versions with the Check for updates button. Both versions have the same features and store their data in the same place. Install only one of them.

Only on your device: the service list, settings, up to 300 incidents and up to 500 log entries. There are no accounts and no cloud sync, so each device has its own service list, incidents and log, and the service list can’t be exported or imported. You’ll find the exact paths for each system on the Installation page. The oldest incidents and entries beyond the limit are removed automatically. You can delete the rest of the data in the app, or by uninstalling the app.

No. The app connects only to your services and to the reference servers. The only exception is the versions downloaded from nci.pl: when you click Check for updates, they send one request for the latest version number, with the app version and the system name. The server sees your IP address, as with any connection. The app never does this on its own. The operators of the monitored hosts and of the reference servers can see connection attempts from your IP address.

• Check that myNetWorking is allowed to send notifications in the system settings.

• Check that Show notification is turned on for the service.

• On Android, check the “Alerts” notification channel in the app’s system settings and turn off battery optimization for the app.

• On iPhone and iPad, notifications arrive in the background only when iOS runs a check — at best roughly every 15 minutes.

• Remember that an alarm appears only with the “DOWN” status. The “No network” status doesn’t trigger a service notification.

iOS and macOS 15 and later may require permission to access the local network. Without it, the app can’t connect to your router, NAS or printer, even though the Internet works. Turn on access for myNetWorking: on iPhone and iPad in Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network, and on a Mac in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network.

The message “Enter a valid host, IP, or HTTP(S) address” appears when:

• the host field contains a port, e.g. 192.168.1.1:8080 — enter the port in the Port field;

• an address without http:// or https:// contains a slash, @, ? or #, e.g. example.com/status;

• the name contains an underscore, a trailing dot or accented (non-ASCII) letters — use the punycode form, which starts with xn--;

• the address starts with another protocol, e.g. ftp://.

Single-label names such as nas or localhost are allowed. You can enter IPv6 addresses with or without square brackets.

The file uses a semicolon as the separator and UTF-8 encoding with a BOM, so Excel with Polish regional settings opens it straight into columns, and LibreOffice and Numbers detect the separator automatically. If Excel with other regional settings shows everything in one column, import the file from the Data tab (From Text/CSV) and choose the semicolon as the delimiter. Dates look like 2026-09-30 14:32:05, so spreadsheets sort them correctly.

Submit a report on the Support and reports page or write to mynetworking@nci.pl. Include the version number from Settings → Information & help → App version, your system and its version, where you got the app (a store or a file from this site) and the steps that lead to the problem. Reports are public, so don’t include passwords or addresses that you don’t want to reveal — send confidential matters by email.