Ping Indicator Plus Plus

A GNOME Shell extension that displays ping latency in the top bar.

Fork of the original ping_indicator, rewritten for GNOME 45+ with:

• Dual-stack monitoring: IPv4 and/or IPv6, each tracked independently (ipv4, ipv6 or both mode)
• Per-protocol status in the top bar (v4 23ms / v6 31ms, icon when down)
• Smart retry: hard-failed protocols (no route, DNS failure, bad destination) are re-probed on a configurable cadence instead of respawning every second
• Offline alert (sound + top bar color) fires only when all active protocols are down, and only once per outage
• Failure reasons in the panel menu: Timeout, Unreachable, No network, DNS Err, Bad dest
• Persistent ping subprocesses (no spawning per refresh)
• Modern Adwaita preferences UI

Installation

From source

make install

This builds the extension and runs gnome-extensions install --force for you.

Log out and back in, then enable:

gnome-extensions enable ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch

If you prefer to run the steps manually:

make
gnome-extensions install --force ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch.zip

Manual

cd ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
wget https://github.com/sig9sec/ping_indicator_plusplus/releases/download/v1/ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch.zip
unzip ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch.zip -d ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch
rm ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch.zip

Log out and back in, then enable with gnome-extensions enable ping_indicator_plusplus@info.sig9.ch.

Configuration

All settings are available in the preferences dialog. Notable keys:

Key	Default	Meaning
ping-mode	both	Which protocol(s) to monitor
ping-destination-v4	8.8.8.8	IPv4 destination (IP or hostname)
ping-destination-v6	2001:4860:4860::8888	IPv6 destination (IP or hostname)
refresh-interval	2	Seconds between pings
failure-timeout	5	Seconds without a reply before a protocol counts as down
retry-interval	10	Smart-retry cadence for exited protocols
show-protocol-status	true	Per-protocol panel display; false = single legacy value
show-failure-reason	false	Show why a protocol is down in the top bar
hide-down-protocols	false	Both mode only: drop down protocols from the top bar

Tips:

• The IPv6 destination should be a real external address: ::1 or a link-local address is always reachable and would report IPv6 as healthy even without actual connectivity.
• Leaving a destination empty disables that protocol.
• The offline alert (sound, bar color) only fires when every active protocol is down. If you only care about IPv4, set the mode to ipv4.
• hide-down-protocols trims the bar while at least one protocol is up; during a full outage the protocols come back, and the popup menu always lists them.

Upgrading from v4

The old ping-destination setting was replaced by the per-protocol destinations; set your destination once in the preferences dialog. By default both protocols are now monitored; switch ping-mode to ipv4 for the old single-stack behavior and display.

Development

Run the static checks (schema strict compile, JS syntax, unit tests):

make check

Building the schema

The schemas/gschemas.compiled file is generated from the .gschema.xml:

glib-compile-schemas schemas/

This is done automatically by make.

Troubleshooting

1. Check for GNOME Shell errors: journalctl --user -f | grep -i ping
2. Inspect via Looking Glass: Alt+F2 → type lg → Extensions
3. Verify the extension is listed: gnome-extensions list
4. Run gnome-tweaks and make sure the extension is enabled