Help

Support

Find answers to common questions, collect local diagnostics, and contact the developer if you need more help.

Help resources

  • User Guide — first launch, menu bar colours, history, resolver settings, Quick Lookup, and Demo Mode.
  • Privacy Policy — exactly what leaves your Mac and what stays local.
  • Terms of Use — permitted use, warranty disclaimer, and liability terms.

Common questions

A resolver is red or shows timeouts

Red means the latest latency crossed the warning threshold or the probe failed. Check that the endpoint is correct and reachable, and that your network, VPN, or firewall allows UDP port 53 or HTTPS as appropriate. Click Test Resolver in Settings to send the configured question once.

A timeout is recorded as real loss, not as an invented latency. One failing resolver does not stop the others from updating. If failures are intermittent, compare another resolver on the same transport to distinguish an endpoint problem from a wider connection problem.

DoH is slower than UDP

That can be completely normal. DNS-over-HTTPS includes HTTP, TLS, connection scheduling, and sometimes connection setup. DNS Taskbar measures the full end-to-end experience and does not subtract those costs. A reused HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 connection is often faster than a new one, and Detail may show the available connection diagnostics.

How do I add a resolver on my LAN?

Open Settings, choose Add Custom Resolver, select UDP, and enter the local hostname or IP address and port. Set the query name and type, then click Test Resolver. The resolver must allow queries from your Mac.

macOS may show a Local Network access prompt the first time DNS Taskbar contacts a private-network endpoint. Allow access if you want to query that resolver. If you previously denied it, review DNS Taskbar under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Local Network.

Quick Lookup ignores part of a pasted URL

This is intentional. DNS operates on hostnames, so DNS Taskbar extracts only the host. It never sends the URL path, query string, fragment, username, password, or other credentials to the resolver.

What does Demo Mode change?

Demo Mode substitutes deterministic, hardware-free sample histories for the three built-in resolvers. It uses no network access and does not overwrite your saved configuration. Quick Lookup remains unavailable until you exit Demo Mode because a lookup requires a live resolver request.

The menu bar does not show every resolver

Automatic mode becomes more compact as the number of visible resolvers increases. A resolver can also be hidden individually with Show in menu bar. Hidden resolvers remain enabled, continue collecting measurements, and appear in Detail.

Collecting diagnostics

DNS Taskbar writes connection, polling, and configuration diagnostics to Apple's local Unified Logging system under ca.slepp.dns-taskbar. Logs stay on your Mac and are never sent automatically.

Run this command in Terminal to collect the last 30 minutes:

log show --last 30m \
  --predicate 'subsystem == "ca.slepp.dns-taskbar"' \
  --info --debug

You can also open Console.app and filter for the same subsystem. Reproduce the issue, then copy the relevant entries.

Privacy note: Logs may include resolver names, endpoint hostnames or IP addresses, and DNS names you configured for monitoring. Review them before sharing.

Contact

If the guide and common questions do not resolve the issue, contact the developer:

Email support: dnstaskbar@vocti.ca

Please include your macOS version, whether the resolver uses UDP or DoH, the exact error or behaviour you saw, and relevant diagnostic entries. Do not include credentials or private information you do not want to share.