wifi percentage?

[bcrguy]

just wondering if anyone knows if/how you can change the wifi icon in the menubar to a percentage similar to the battery one..

thanks

 

[larkost]

There is not a readily acessable preference, so most likely: no. And even if there were, I am not sure it would help you out much, since the meters are probably an aproimation of some mish-mash of signal strength and singnal/noise ratio. That is they are trying to provide a very simple dashboard measurement of a very complex situation. Trying to put numbers on that is just going to confuse you.

 

[prisstratton]

Hmmm.....not quite sure what you are looking for and I do not know how to do what you are asking, but here are a couple of alternatives.

(i) Did you look at iStat menu's.

(ii) Browse to /System/Library/CoreServices and check out the WiFi Diagnostics application.

Hope it helps......

 

[bcrguy]

Hmmm.....not quite sure what you are looking for and I do not know how to do what you are asking, but here are a couple of alternatives.

(i) Did you look at iStat menu's.

(ii) Browse to /System/Library/CoreServices and check out the WiFi Diagnostics application.

Hope it helps......

i want to be able to see my wifi signal strength in percent as opposed to the bars icon.. similar to how the battery one is done..

 

[DustinT]

i want to be able to see my wifi signal strength in percent as opposed to the bars icon.. similar to how the battery one is done..


Image

I guess the answer is that it's a bit more complicated than that so I don't think you'll find something easily to do what you want. Sorry.

 

[sweetbrat]

I've never seen signal strength shown as a percentage...not on a MBP, not on a phone. Your battery is quantifiable...it can be at 100% of capacity, 0% or anywhere in between. I'm not sure that signal strength can been quantified the same way. The meter you have now gives you an approximation of your signal strength. If you need to test how fast your connection is, there's plenty of ways to test that, but I don't know of a way to see it as a %.

 

[jeremyshaw]

Maybe a -dbm power&noise figure... I dunno.

 

[bcrguy]

I've never seen signal strength shown as a percentage...not on a MBP, not on a phone. Your battery is quantifiable...it can be at 100% of capacity, 0% or anywhere in between. I'm not sure that signal strength can been quantified the same way. The meter you have now gives you an approximation of your signal strength. If you need to test how fast your connection is, there's plenty of ways to test that, but I don't know of a way to see it as a %.

i know but id still like instead of full bars it show 100%, 3 bars 75%, 2 50%1 25% and of course 0 0%..

 

[sweetbrat]

If its giving you exactly the same info, why do you want to see it in numbers instead of bars? I'm just curious.

 

[bcrguy]

If its giving you exactly the same info, why do you want to see it in numbers instead of bars? I'm just curious.

i prefer to look at numbers then bars

edit.. and when i had my iPod touch jailbroken years ago i was able to change the wifi logo to be a percentage.. someone said that they had never seen it done, its not on a phone but it was running iPhone software

 

[avflinsch]

i know but id still like instead of full bars it show 100%, 3 bars 75%, 2 50%1 25% and of course 0 0%..

signal strength is usually in some sort of log format, with each increase/decrease being a 3db change. A better estimate would be
4 bars - 100%
3 bars - 50%
2 bars - 25%
1 bar - 12.5%

Also, what real difference does it make? A strong signal @ 4 bars, might be mostly noise and a weak clean signal @ 1 bar might work better.

 

[r0k]

Option click on the wifi icon in your menu bar and you get statistics. One of the most useful is the transmit rate. Mine always shows 200 to 270 MBPS from my Macbook which is only about 15 feet from my AEBS.

 

[IzzyJG99]

signal strength is usually in some sort of log format, with each increase/decrease being a 3db change. A better estimate would be
4 bars - 100%
3 bars - 50%
2 bars - 25%
1 bar - 12.5%

Also, what real difference does it make? A strong signal @ 4 bars, might be mostly noise and a weak clean signal @ 1 bar might work better.

That's how I have always read the bars as a percentage. Not sure if that's the case. I mean I've gone down the street with my iPhone 4 and iPad 2 before and gotten onto my network with one bar and had honestly the same speeds as if i were full bars, but with increased latency. Which leads me to believe the bar is just a purely graphic view of signal strength and not so much....speed. Dunno though.

I tend to assume (possibly rightly so) that Wi-Fi (802.11 overall) is much stronger than necessary. Right now I can see four other networks popping up with one to two bars and I'm at least 50' away from another house.

...Too bad they're all locked. Lol.