task manager 0 network

How-To Geek

How to see the applications using your network on windows 10.

Here's how to see which applications are using your Windows PC's network connection right now---or at any time in the last 30 days.

Quick Links

Use the task manager to see current usage, launch resource monitor to see more details, see network data usage over the last 30 days.

Windows can show you which applications are using your network right now and how much data they're transferring. You can even see a list of apps that have used your network over the last 30 days.

This shows which apps are using the internet, but the below methods don't just show internet usage. They show all network usage. Whether an application is communicating with a remote server on the internet or another computer on your local network, it will appear as using your network connection all the same.

To check precisely which applications are using your network right now---and how much data they're downloading and uploading---look in your Task Manager .

To open the Task Manager, right-click your taskbar and select "Task Manager" or press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. There are many other ways to open the Task Manager , too.

In the list of processes, click the "Network" heading to sort the list of running processes by network usage. Watch the list, and you'll see which applications are using your network along with how much bandwidth they're using.

(If you don't see the Network heading, click "More Details" first.)

Technically, this isn't a complete list---if a process isn't using much network resources, Windows rounds down to 0 Mbps (Megabits per second.) It's just a quick way to see which processes are using a noticeable amount of bandwidth.

Related: Windows Task Manager: The Complete Guide

For more detailed information, go straight to the Resource Monitor application. You can launch it by searching for "Resource Monitor" in the Start menu or by clicking the "Performance" tab in the Task Manager and clicking "Open Resource Monitor" at the bottom of the window.

Click the "Network" tab, and you'll see a list of processes downloading or uploading data over the network. You'll also see how much data they're transferring in B/sec (Bytes per second.)

This also shows processes using a small amount of network bandwidth, which would otherwise appear as using 0 Mbps in the Task Manager.

With both the Task Manager and Resource Monitor lists, you can right-click an application and select "Search Online" to find more information about what exactly the process is.

Windows 10 keeps track of which applications are using your network and how much data they're transferring. You can see which apps have used your network over the past 30 days and how much data they've transferred.

To find this information, head to Settings > Network & Internet > Data Usage. Click "View usage per app" at the top of the window. (You can press Windows+I to open the Settings window quickly.)

From here, you can scroll through a list of apps that have used your network in the last 30 days.

If you're on a Wi-Fi network, you can see apps that have used your current Wi-Fi network or a list of apps that have used the network on all Wi-Fi networks to which you've been connected. Select what you want to see in the "Show usage from" box.

The top of the list will contain obvious culprits---likely the apps you use the most. Scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see applications that rarely connect to the internet and don't use much data when they do.

How to use Windows 10 Task Manager to monitor system performance

Task Manager can help you to monitor your Windows 10 computer's performance in real-time, and here we show you how.

When something is not working correctly on your Windows 10 PC, the Task Manager is a tool that can provide valuable information about your system performance.

Although the Processes tab helps you troubleshoot applications and services running on your computer, you can use the Performance tab to get a real-time information of the performance on your computer, including CPU and memory usage, as well as hard drive, network, and Bluetooth information.

The ability to monitor your computer's performance in real-time can not only help you understand how resources are being utilized, but it's also useful information when trying to figure out the reason your device is not achieving expected network and hard drive speeds, among other issues.

In this Windows 10 guide, we'll walk you through the steps to use Task Manager to monitor the performance of your computer.

How to monitor your PC real-time performance

Opening task manager.

On Windows 10, you can use Task Manager for an array of tasks, including to view real-time data on your computer's performance, but first, you need to know how to open the tool. Below are a few ways to open Task Manager:

• Right-click the Taskbar and click on Task Manager .
• Open Start, do a search for Task Manager and click the result.
• Use the Ctrl + Shift + Esc keyboard shortcut.
• Use the Ctrl + Alt + Del keyboard shortcut and click on Task Manager .
• Use the Windows key + X keyboard shortcut to open the power-user menu and click on Task Manager .

If you never open this tool before, you're likely to see Task Manager in compact mode. To get to Performance, you need to click the More details button, and then click on the Performance tab.

How to monitor system performance

In the Performance tab, you can monitor four main components, including processor, memory, hard drive, network (and Bluetooth).

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On the left pane by default, you'll see all the components with small graphs displaying their current activity in percentage for CPU, Memory, and Disk, and Kilobits per second for network adapters and Bluetooth devices providing visuals to quickly identify any spikes on resources.

You can always right-click below the components to access the context menu to change the view and hide the graphs or only to show a summary, which can come in handy if you want to keep Task Manager open at all times.

Also, in any section, you can double-click or right-click a graph and select Graph summary view to see only a compact graph with the component activity information.

Quick Tip: If you need to document any information, instead of taking a screenshot, you can right-click anywhere in a section and click Copy from the context menu. Then simply paste the information in a text file for later use.

Here's the breakdown of each section in the Performance tab:

The CPU section provides details about the processor and resource utilization. In the top-right corner you'll see exactly which processor your computer is using and the clock speed it was designed to run.

The graph shows the overall utilization of the processor over a 60 second period. In addition, you can right-click anywhere inside the section, select Change graph to , and click Logical processors to view a graph for each core of your processor.

The context menu also offers an option to show kernel times , which you would typically use to troubleshoot devices with poorly written drivers or failing hardware that is causing too many interruptions.

At the bottom, you'll see more details about the processor resources, including percentage utilization, processes, threads, handles, and your computer up time.

On the right, you can see the processor specifications, such as speed, the number of cores (virtual processors), if it's capable to run virtual machines, and cached memory information if applicable.

Memory offers a view of the RAM usage by the system and applications. In the top-right corner, you'll see total amount and type (e.g. DDR3) of memory installed on your device.

In this section, you'll notice that there are two graphs. The first one on the top shows total memory usage over a 60 second period, and the graph below shows the amount of memory is currently allocated.

The memory composition has four parts:

• In use (Compressed): Amount of RAM currently being used by applications, drivers, or the operating system.
• Modified: Memory content that has to be saved to the hard drive before it can be used for something else.
• Standby: Amount of memory that contains cached data and code not being used by the system.
• Free: Shows memory currently not in use.

You can always see these details by hovering with the mouse over each section of the graph.

At the bottom, you'll also find detailed information about your computer's memory usage, including "In use (Compressed)," "Committed," "Cached," "paged pool" and "non-paged pool" memory.

On the right, you can also see memory specifications, such as speed (e.g. 1600MHz), slots available, memory form factor (e.g. SODIMM), and memory reserved for hardware on the right side. The details provided on this page not only give you an overview of memory usage in real-time, but you can use this information at the time you need to upgrade your system.

For example, the "Slots used," tells you whether or not your computer have slots available to add more memory. "Speed," "Form Factor," and memory type are important information at the time to purchase the correct memory sticks to upgrade your computer.

The Disk section provides important information about hard drive usage. Task Manager doesn't group multiple hard drives into a single view, which means that you'll get a Disk section for each hard drive installed on your computer.

On the top-right corner, you'll see exactly the hard drive your computer is using, the interface type (e.g. mSATA), and capacity in Gigabytes.

This section includes two graphs. The first graph from the top shows you the hard drive activity over a 60 second period. The second graph shows you the transfer speeds in Kilobytes per second over a 60 second period.

At the bottom of the section, you'll also find detailed information, including the percentage of drive active time, the average speed that it takes the hard drive to respond to a request, and read and writes speeds.

Additionally, you get information on actual usable capacity after the drive is formatted, and "System disk" display whether the drive is where Windows 10 is installed, or if it's a secondary drive.

Ethernet/Wi-Fi

Task Manager doesn't group multiple network adapters into a single view, which means that you'll get a section for each Ethernet or Wi-Fi adapter installed on your computer. Even virtual network adapters will list separately.

When you select a network adapter, you'll notice the name of your Wi-Fi or Ethernet adapter in the top-right corner.

There is only one graph in this section that shows you the throughput of the adapter over a 60 second period.

Below the main graph, you also get information about data sent and received in Kilobits per second. Additional details include adapter name, connection type, and your current IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

Advanced users can also right-click the graph and select "View network details" to see more network details that can help troubleshoot network problems, such as link speed, state, bytes generated, sent and received, along with unicast packets information.

In the Performance tab, you'll also notice that there is a Bluetooth section, which is probably showing as "Not connected," even though you have connected a Bluetooth device to your computer. The reason is that this is actually a network adapter, and it's not meant for peripherals like speakers, keyboard, and mouse.

You will see additional information in the Bluetooth section when you connect your phone or another device, and you begin transferring data.

Wrapping things up

As you can see the Performance tab provides great information on how your computer's hardware is performing with easy to understand graphs and important system and hardware details. This information can be very useful not only to understand how resources are being utilized but to troubleshoot many problems as well.

More Windows 10 resources

For more help articles, coverage, and answers on Windows 10, you can visit the following resources:

• Windows 10 on Windows Central – All you need to know
• Windows 10 help, tips, and tricks
• Windows 10 forums on Windows Central

Mauro Huculak is technical writer for WindowsCentral.com. His primary focus is to write comprehensive how-tos to help users get the most out of Windows 10 and its many related technologies. He has an IT background with professional certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA, and he's a recognized member of the Microsoft MVP community.

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0% Network Utilization, Packet Loss

Hey, so as of yestarday, 10/20/19, for some reason task manager decided to stop showing network utilization, and keep it at 0% for everything. I checked the network details in the performance tab for network, and here is what it looks like. I have a wireless connection, and it has never acted up until now. Im pretty sure this has something to do with windows but im not sure. I have tried a lot, I have tried updating my computer, restarting it, and nothing really worked. The main reason I am concerned is I think it is effecting packet loss in games. I pinged google in cmd (around 20 times) and had no packet loss though, but in games it shows a 5% packet loss at times, which is not normal. My ping stays around 20-40, but everytime I do something the packets get loss. I am not sure if these 2 issues are connected, but they started on the same day. Also, you can see the graph a little in the background. For some reason, it spikes up randomly with around 100 kbps, for no reason. Im pretty sure thats it, but I will probably be trying to fix it, so I might come up with new info or a solution.

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Hey, so as of yestarday, 10/20/19, for some reason task manager decided to stop showing network utilization, and keep it at 0% for everything. I checked the network details in the performance tab for network, and here is what it looks like. I have a wireless connection, and it has never acted up until now. Im pretty sure this has something to do with windows but im not sure. I have tried a lot, I have tried updating my computer, restarting it, and nothing really worked. The main reason I am concerned is I think it is effecting packet loss in games. I pinged google in cmd (around 20 times) and had no packet loss though, but in games it shows a 5% packet loss at times, which is not normal. My ping stays around 20-40, but everytime I do something the packets get loss. I am not sure if these 2 issues are connected, but they started on the same day. Also, you can see the graph a little in the background. For some reason, it spikes up randomly with around 100 kbps, for no reason. Im pretty sure thats it, but I will probably be trying to fix it, so I might come up with new info or a solution.    

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Show all network activity in task manager

Is there a way to make the Windows 10 task manager (or the resource monitor) show network usage for ALL tasks, including the kernel? I am trying to figure out which process / task is eating up my network bandwidth. When I run an internet speed test in my browser (chrome), I can see the usage spike in Task Manager's Wifi graph, and I can see the usage of chrome.exe jump to the expected number in the processes tab (when I sort by network %). That is, the usage shown in task manager roughly matches what the internet speed test reports. No other process (as shown by task manager) has a significant % network usage.

But something is consuming a lot of network BW. The available bandwidth on my home network is normally 60 Mbps up and down, and I can see that number when I run the speed test on other devices (e.g. my phone). I can also see that on my Windows 10 laptop immediately after a reboot, but after some hours have gone by, the speed test will show only 20 or 30 Mbps. So, the problem is somewhere on my laptop, but Task Manager / Resource Monitor isn't showing me the culprit. Does somebody know how to make it show more data?

I realize this question sounds similar to others that have been asked in the past (such as How to make windows task manager to show network usage? ), but those solutions didn't work for me.

• task-manager

• 3 You say you've tried Resource Monitor. The "Processes with Network Activity" section includes all processes, including System. So I'm not sure what else you are looking for. Also, your title doesn't quite align with the body of your question. If you could edit one or the other so they are more in alignment, it might help attract more answers. –  Doug Deden Apr 4 at 21:09
• You might look at free tools, Network Usage View ( nirsoft.net/utils/network_usage_view.html ) and Glasswire ( glasswire.com ) for more info. –  DrMoishe Pippik Apr 4 at 21:12
• 2 Doug, turn that into an answer and it'll probably be a good one for this. –  music2myear Apr 4 at 21:20
• Windows 10 does come with a neat utility that tracks the volume of data downloaded per application since connecting to the network: under Settings > Network and Internet > Status > Data Usage. Some routers have utilities for tracking data per device as well. If you don't see anything in Resource Monitor though, then the speed difference is probably not caused by a process leeching internet. Try using different speed tests as well –  Cpt.Whale Apr 4 at 21:22

Is there a way to make the Windows 10 task manager (or the resource monitor) show network usage for ALL tasks, including the kernel?

In Resource Monitor there is a section titled "Processes with Network Activity". This section displays info about all processes, including System. And the description for System is "NT Kernel & System".

That answers your question as asked.

If you are looking for other network traffic tools that might help you understand more about the traffic, try:

• Settings > Network and Internet > Status > Data Usage (thanks, Cpt.Whale)
• Network Usage View (thanks, DrMoishe Pippik)
• Glasswire (thanks, DrMoishe Pippik)

• Thanks, Doug. You corrected a false assumption that I made. The resource monitor does indeed show all network activity. So, I am now going to explore the possibility that the Wifi adapter or its driver is messed up. –  benjwhite9 Apr 5 at 15:15

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