Private Eye Checks Your Mac’s Network Connections For Free [OS X Tips]

By

What's connecting to where?
What's connecting to where?

If you’ve ever wondered precisely what your Mac is connecting to on the internet and when it’s doing it, there’s a new free app called Private Eye to help you out.

For many many years now, the app of choice for this kind of job was Little Snitch, and it remains the choice of professionals because of its lengthy list of advanced features.

Private Eye is a simpler option, but still a useful one. All it does is show you what’s going on, network-wise.

As applications on your Mac make outgoing internet connections, or pick up incoming ones, this activity is picked up and shows in Private Eye’s list.

You can sort by by application or by incoming/outgoing connections. The chances are for most people that the incoming ones will be rare, but that makes them all the more worth knowing about.

Private Eye is strictly a viewer app: it collects the information and displays it, but nothing more. You can’t do anything from inside Private Eye. If you see an app misbehaving or making a connection you’d rather it didn’t, you’ll have to intercept it or deactivate it elsewhere.

The app is free and available to download from Radio Silence. You’ll need to be running 10.7 or later, and make sure your Gatekeeper settings allow installing software from anywhere.

Source: Radio Silence

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.