Pulse
Free evaluation

Try Pulse without the hardware.

The Pulse device is a small box you plug into a LAN port. Inside it runs a monitoring agent — and that exact same agent is available here as a plain command-line program for your Mac, Windows, or Linux machine. Run it in a terminal and open the link it prints: your network's live latency graphs, no account needed.

Evaluation only. This download is for trying Pulse out — it runs in the foreground in a terminal, installs nothing, and stops when you press Ctrl+C. It is not a background service and isn't meant for production monitoring; that's what the Pulse device is for. Everything it creates lives in one folder you can delete afterwards.

STEP 1 Download the agent for your computer

macOS
Apple Silicon (M1–M4) Intel
Not sure? Apple menu → About This Mac. "Apple M…" means Apple Silicon.
Windows
64-bit (x64) ARM64
Nearly all Windows PCs are x64. ARM64 is Surface and other Snapdragon devices.
Linux
x86-64 ARM64
ARM64 covers Raspberry Pi 4/5 and other ARM boards running a 64-bit OS.

Verify your download against SHA256SUMS.txt.

STEP 2 Run it

The agent is a single file — no installer, no configuration, no account needed yet. Open a terminal in your Downloads folder and start it.

macOS
# download from the terminal (avoids the "unverified developer" warning),
# make it executable, and run it:
curl -LO https://sesamiq.com/download/pulse-agent-macos-arm64
chmod +x pulse-agent-macos-arm64
./pulse-agent-macos-arm64 run

If you downloaded with the browser instead and macOS blocks it, clear the quarantine flag first: xattr -d com.apple.quarantine pulse-agent-macos-arm64

Windows (PowerShell)
Invoke-WebRequest https://sesamiq.com/download/pulse-agent-windows-amd64.exe -OutFile pulse-agent.exe
.\pulse-agent.exe run

If SmartScreen appears, choose More info → Run anyway. The binaries are unsigned for now; checksums above let you verify what you downloaded.

Linux
curl -LO https://sesamiq.com/download/pulse-agent-linux-amd64
chmod +x pulse-agent-linux-amd64
./pulse-agent-linux-amd64 run

STEP 3 Open the link it prints — that's it

The agent prints its own permanent page the moment it starts:

3:41PM INF agent starting version=0.2.0 serial=PLS-…-4HVM
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Watch this agent live:

    https://app.sesamiq.com/a/PLS-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

  (Add it to a free account from that page to name it
   and get alerts.)
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  1. Open the link. Live latency graphs and connection checks appear within a minute — no account, no sign-up, nothing to configure.
  2. The page updates itself while the agent runs: DNS, connectivity, and latency from wherever your computer sits on the network.
  3. Want to keep it? Add the agent to a free account right from that page (one email link — no password, no credit card) to name it and get downtime alerts. (Lost the link? Run ./pulse-agent-macos-arm64 serial to print it again.)

Good to know

What does it do while it's running?
It runs lightweight network checks (DNS lookups, TCP/HTTPS reachability, latency) and sends the results and basic health telemetry to your dashboard over HTTPS. It never captures network traffic or packet contents, and it doesn't need administrator rights.
How do I stop and clean up?
Press Ctrl+C to stop. The agent keeps its identity in a .pulse folder next to where you ran it — delete that folder and the binary and it's gone. In the dashboard you can release the agent from the Agents page.
How is this different from the Pulse device?
Same software, different packaging. The device runs the agent 24/7 from a LAN port with no computer involved — that's the production setup. This trial runs only while your terminal is open, so use it to evaluate the dashboard, not to monitor a customer site.