Posted on Jan 10

Velo: A Cross-Platform Network Speed Monitor Built with Go & Wails

#showdev #wails #go #vue

Introduction

Have you ever felt your internet connection dragging, but you aren't sure if it's just a momentary glitch or a consistent pattern?

I built Velo, a desktop application that helps you track your network speed over time without the hassle of manually running speed tests in your browser.

In this post, I'll share why I built it, how it works, and the technology stack behind it.

What is Velo?

Velo is a network speed measurement tool designed to run as a desktop application.

It automatically runs a speed test once every hour to record your Download, Upload, and Latency metrics. It then visualizes this historical data on an interactive chart, allowing you to spot trends at a glance. You can, of course, trigger a manual measurement whenever you want.

Fun fact: The name velo comes from the Italian word veloce, which means "fast." Why Italian? Honestly, there’s no deep meaning—I was just looking for a name and thought it sounded cool!

Motivation

I noticed that my internet connection tends to get sluggish at night.

Usually, when this happens, I open FAST.com to check the speed. However, opening a browser and typing in the URL every single time is tedious. More importantly, a single test only tells me the speed right now—it doesn't help me understand the trend or prove that "yes, it is consistently slow every night at 9 PM."

I wanted an application that would automatically measure and record the speed periodically so I could analyze the patterns.

While I know there are similar applications and more feature-rich monitoring tools out there, I believe that reinventing the wheel is often the best way to learn.

Features

Speed Test: Measures download speed, upload speed, and latency using speedtest-go.
Automatic Monitoring: Runs in the background and tests speed every hour.
Visualization: Displays your network history on an interactive Time vs. Speed chart.
Cross-Platform: Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Tech Stack

To build this, I used Wails, which allowed me to write the backend in Go and the frontend using standard web technologies.

Framework: Wails v2
Backend: Go (v1.25+)
Frontend: Vue.js (Node.js & npm)
Library: speedtest-go for the core measurement logic.

Getting Started

If you want to try it out or contribute, you can build it from the source.

Prerequisites

Go (v1.25 or later)
Node.js & npm

Wails CLI:

go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest

Installation & Running

Clone the repository:

git clone [https://github.com/kanywst/velo.git](https://github.com/kanywst/velo.git)
cd velo

Install dependencies:

# Backend
go mod tidy

# Frontend
cd frontend
npm install
cd ..

Run in Development Mode:
```
wails dev
```
Build for Production:
```
wails build
```

The binary will be generated in build/bin.

Conclusion

Velo is a personal project born out of a simple need to verify my ISP's performance.

It is still very much a work in progress, and I suspect there are a few bugs lurking around! I plan to keep improving it and fixing issues as I find them.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments! If you find it useful (or just like the name), I would appreciate a star on GitHub.

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