The fault is never happening when you press the button. Watch Mode re-runs the check on a loop for up to an hour so the drop has somewhere to show up, then tells you which part of the path is failing.
Download Free on the App StoreWatch Mode and fault localisation arrive in PingKit 2.1. Smart Diagnostics, ping, traceroute, MTR and the Connection Monitor are free and available today.
The most common complaint about a home network is also the one that every one-shot tool is structurally unable to answer. You notice the video call freeze, you open a speed test, and by the time it finishes everything is fine again. The test is not lying. It is measuring a moment that happens not to contain the problem.
Worse, a passing test actively misleads. It tells you the connection is healthy, which sends you looking at the app, the laptop or the person on the other end of the call, when the thing that actually broke was a Wi-Fi link that drops for four seconds every twenty minutes.
The only honest way to catch that is to keep looking.
Watch Mode runs the full diagnostic on a loop for 10, 30 or 60 minutes, at least 30 seconds apart, and records every run. At the end it tells you which of three shapes you have, because they need completely different responses:
Every run was healthy. Whatever the problem is, it did not happen while PingKit was watching. Useful in itself: it rules out a fault that is present continuously, and tells you to watch for longer or at a different time of day.
Some runs failed and some passed. This is the pattern a single test cannot catch. PingKit reports how many failed, the longest healthy stretch between failures, and which part of the path was implicated most often.
Every run failed. This is good news of a sort: the fault is happening right now, so you can troubleshoot it directly instead of waiting for it to reappear while you hold a cable.
Fewer than three runs completed. PingKit says so rather than dressing two data points up as a pattern. Two runs can only tell you it worked twice or broke twice, and neither is evidence about intermittency.
Watch Mode runs while PingKit is open. iOS does not permit an app to run network checks in the background, and any iPhone app claiming continuous monitoring is either wrong or relying on something narrower than it sounds. PingKit keeps the screen awake for the duration of a session and stops when you leave. For monitoring that carries on after you put the phone down, the Mac Agent is the honest answer, and it is included with Guardian.
The free diagnostic already tells you which steps failed, and that is genuinely useful. What it leaves you to work out is the conclusion, which is the part that decides what you do next. PingKit reads the sequence and names the segment:
No active network interface. Nothing beyond your iPhone could be tested, so nothing beyond it can be blamed.
Your device is on the network but the router did not answer. The problem sits between the two, which usually means Wi-Fi range, interference or the router itself. This is the classic "my Wi-Fi is broken" shape.
The router answers but the internet beyond it does not. This is the conclusion that stops you rebooting equipment that is working perfectly and gets you straight to the provider.
The connection is up and servers respond, but turning names into addresses is failing. Usually a resolver setting rather than a broken connection, which is why it presents as "some sites work and some do not".
Names resolve and servers respond but web traffic did not complete, which points at a captive portal, a filter or a VPN. Or everything works and it is simply slower than expected, which is a different problem with different answers.
PingKit also lists what it confirmed working. A conclusion you can sanity-check is worth more than one you have to take on faith, and knowing your router is fine is often as useful as knowing your ISP is not.
An ISP support script is built to absorb vague complaints. "It drops sometimes" gets you a router reboot and a callback. "I ran 30 checks over an hour, 7 failed, my router answered on every single one of them, and the failures were all beyond it" gets you a different conversation.
Every diagnostic run is written to PingKit's history, which stays free and unlimited, and the history exports to CSV, JSON or a PDF report at no cost. Nothing about that changes in 2.1.
Download PingKit free and let it watch for you.
Download Free on the App StoreRequires iOS 17.0 or later.