Little Snitch Network Monitor Turns Off Average ratng: 6,1/10 9610 votes

Your Mac is a Net whisperer; a sleep talker; a teller of tales; a spreader of information. It's always sending messages to unseen servers while you go about your daily work. How do you keep tabs on and take control of what your Mac is talking to? Objective Development's $45 Little Snitch is the ticket to truly understanding and managing who your Mac makes contact with.

Little Snitch

Feb 26, 2016  Re: Is there an equivalent of Little Snitch on OS X for Windows? In reply to wklee. Sep 3, 2015 It's a network monitor for OS X. For improved security Little Snitch now keeps an eye on the code signature of all programs that want to connect to the Internet. Improved Network Filter Using “Deep Packet Inspection” to reliably identify connections based on the server’s name.

Price: $45+ for a new copy; $25+ for an upgrade

Bottom line: Little Snitch is not only a great firewall application, it's educational and fun to use.

The Good

  • Does more than the built-in firewall
  • Has three different modes for more specific controls
  • The Map lets you see where all the traffic is coming to and going from.
  • Customizable features

The Bad

  • Buying more than one license can get pricey.

Mind this chatter

Little Snitch is a firewall application and, as you may know, your Mac has a built-in firewall that you can turn on and use to quietly block unauthorized incoming network connections. So why buy a separate app if you already have something built-in? The answer is simple: Little Snitch does more than just block or allow incoming network connections. It gives you detailed information on all your network communication, whether it's from the outside world coming into your Mac or it's being sent from your Mac to anywhere on the internet.

Chatter from your Mac isn't all bad. In fact, most of it is good and necessary. Your Mac regularly checks the App Store to make sure your apps and OS are up to date. You stream music and movies from iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and Pandora. You send and receive email, messages, and files all as a part of your normal work and play.

However, every web page you connect to also talks to ad servers and every app you open may also send information about you, your Mac, and about the app itself back to the company that created it. Little Snitch logs all this information and lets you look at it, see what the communication is about, and choose when or whether you want to allow your Mac to make that communication in the future.

Simple is as simple does

Little Snitch offers three modes of operation:

  • Alert Mode
  • Silent Mode—Allow Connections
  • Silent Mode—Deny Connections

By default, Little Snitch uses Silent Mode—Allow Connections, which behaves just like Apple's built-in firewall does, which is to say that it assumes any application on your Mac that is properly signed is allowed to send and receive data at will. It also tracks every connection, while allowing all network traffic to freely enter and exit your Mac, so you can look at those connections and decide whether or not you want to make that connection in the future. This mode is the best choice for most users.

Alert Mode asks you to make a choice each time an application attempts to make a connection to the Internet. Once you make a choice, Little Snitch remembers your choices and allows or denies that connection in the future. Initially, if you're just starting to use Little Snitch, this can feel more like Annoying Mode, as you'll need to approve or deny every network connection attempt.

Silent Mode—Deny Connections is designed for situations where you want to create specific rules about which connections you will allow. Any connections you have not created an explicit rule for will be denied without asking for your approval.

The all seeing eye

The fun begins once Little Snitch is installed. A small menu item appears on the top of your screen and displays a small gauge setting so you know when you're sending and receiving network traffic. Click that menu and you'll see options to change modes and items for Little Snitch's Network Monitor, Rules, and Preferences.

Open the Network Monitor and a new window will open displaying a map of the world centered on your current location with arcs of network traffic traveling from your Mac to various locations throughout the world. A sidebar displays a list of applications sending and receiving traffic. Selecting one of those apps highlights where your traffic is going on the map. Another sidebar on the right displays a Connection Inspector which you use to view general and detailed information about data being sent with specific information about the application selected and why it might be sending or receiving information.

While viewing the Map or using Little Snitch's rules window you can select different apps and processes and use a small switch to allow or deny network traffic by flipping a small Rule Management switch.

Lockdown by location

Little Snitch has a multitude of customizable features, but one of my favorites is Automatic Profile Switching (APS), which allows you to create filtering profiles based on the network you're connected to. Want to be invisible when you're at Starbucks? No problem, you can create a profile for that. Not as worried when you're on your home network? You can create a profile for that. When you hop on a network APS detects where you are and automatically changes your Little Snitch profile to match your settings for the network you're on.

The ultimate lockdown

I wouldn't normally think of a firewall as something fun. It's business, pal. Just business. But that's not true of Little Snitch. Not only is it a great firewall application, it's educational and super fun to use. If you need something more than Apple's built-in firewall or if you need better insight into which applications are sending information from your Mac to servers on the Internet, Little Snitch is the best app I've seen, which makes it the best app for you.

Who goes there?

Hardware? Software? No-ware? How do you make sure your Mac's locked down and keeping your secrets to itself? Sound off in the comments below.

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General

  • Network Filter — You can turn off the entire network filter here. This can be helpful if something does not work as expected and you want to know whether one of your Little Snitch rules is the cause. In demo mode, without a valid license, Little Snitch deactivates the filter every three hours and you need to manually turn it on again. This option can also be changed in the status menu.
  • Show status in menu bar — Choose whether the status menu shall be displayed.
  • Show inactivity warning in menu bar — With this option turned on the status menu displays a yellow warning triangle when the network filter is off.
  • Operation Mode — Choose between Alert Mode and Silent Mode here. This option can also be changed in the status menu.

Monitor Turns Off And On

Alert

  • Preselected Options — People have preferences what type of rule to create when a connection alert is shown. Some prefer to make all rules temporary in the first place, some make domain rules only, while others always make their rules as specific as possible. Here you can decide what the defaults are, so that you can quickly create your preferred type of rule.
  • Confirm connection alert automatically — When you use “Back to my Mac” to log in to your computer from remote, it is frustrating to be locked out just because Little Snitch is stalling your login, waiting for somebody to answer a connection alert, but nobody is at home. You could answer it yourself, if you could get around this single first alert… When you set up an alert timeout, you can answer alerts while you are in front of your computer and have them allowed or denied automatically with default settings when you are away.
  • Confirm with Return and Escape — Whether Allow and Deny can be triggered via keyboard. Some people prefer to use the mouse only, because they may be typing text when the alert appears, typing Return or Escape accidentally. Note that Little Snitch ignores keystrokes for the first second after the alert appears to catch most of these accidental keystrokes.
  • Detail Level — How much detail about the connection is shown by default and how many rule creation options are shown. Having too many details distracts from the relevant information, but some people prefer to see them. Whatever you choose here, when you click the Connection Details button, all details are shown and all rule creation options become available.

Network Monitor

  • Network Monitor on/off — Whether Network Monitor is available or not. If it is off, no new connection statistics are collected and Silent Mode connections are not recorded (but still allowed or denied immediately).
  • Keyboard Shortcut — A global keyboard shortcut to show and hide Little Snitch Network Monitor.
  • Show network activity in menu bar — Whether the status menu icon should display current data rates and blocked connections.
  • Show data rates as numerical values — With this option turned on the status menu shows numerical data rates in addition to the traffic meter.
  • Color scheme — Whether to display traffic rates in color (red for up-, green for download) or monochrome.
  • Data rate unit — The unit in which data rates are displayed in the status menu or in Network Monitor – either Bytes per second (B/s) or Bits per second (bps).
  • Show automatically when mouse enters menu bar icon — With this option turned on, the Network Monitor window is shown temporarily, while the mouse cursor hovers the status menu icon. The window is closed automatically as soon as the mouse cursor leaves that area.
  • Automatically update my location in map — Whether to use Apple Location Services to determine where the My Location mark is drawn. For privacy reasons, Little Snitch determines your current location from your Language and Region Preferences by default. It places My Location in the middle of the country configured there.
  • Show Helper XPC Processes — Apple encourages developers to split their apps into multiple processes, with each having only a restricted set of permissions to e.g. separate parts that need file system access from parts that need network access, which is potentially dangerous. There is a mechanism for this in macOS called XPC. If Little Snitch can figure out that a helper XPC process is working on behalf of an application, you can choose to hide the technical details and display just the application (this is the default). If you prefer to see Application via HelperXPC, enable this option.
  • Capacity — Little Snitch stores statistics for all connections with distinct properties (see section [How can we identify a connection?]). There is no time limit, so the amount of data stored could eat up your computer’s resources. We therefore limit the number of connection statistics stored. If the limit is exceeded, the oldest connections for each process are merged into an Older Connections entry so that we collect at least the total statistics for each process. The number you configure here is not the total number of (expanded) lines in the Connection List because each line represents a class of connections (with potentially different ports and Internet addresses).

Automatic Profile Switching

  • Enable automatic profile switching — Whether automatic profile switching is enabled at all.
  • Default Action — When you join a network not yet known to Little Snitch, it shows a New Network Alert. This may be annoying if you are traveling a lot, connecting to new networks often. With this option, you can set a default action which is performed instead of showing an alert. If you really want to assign a specific profile to a new network (which differs from the default), you need to do it manually.
  • Save geolocations of networks — The list of known networks contains all the technical details stored for each network, but the names may be cryptic, so you often cannot remember which network is which. Little Snitch can store geographic coordinates for each network, which makes them easier to identify. The info is determined via Apple Location Services.
  • Distinguish OpenVPN remote servers — If enabled, Little Snitch attempts to detect an OpenVPN remote's hostname, allowing you to assign a different profile to each remote. If disabled, all OpenVPN remotes are treated as the same network.

Security

Security preferences are locked by default. You need to click the lock in the bottom left corner and enter an Administrator password in order to make changes.

  • Allow Rule and Profile Editing — If you have managed accounts (e.g. for your children) on your computer, you may want to forbid users to edit rules and profiles. In order to make changes, you need to temporarily enable editing. The Rules Window offers quick access to this option in the toolbar. When a connection alert is shown while rule and profile editing is disabled, only temporary rules may be created.
  • Allow Profile Switching — Whether users may switch profiles. This option is always on if the previous option is on.
  • Allow Preferences Editing — Whether users may change preferences. Useful if you have managed accounts (e.g. for children) on your computer. Users who have authorized as Administrator by clicking the lock may still edit preferences or re-enable this option.
  • Allow Global Rule Editing — Whether users are allowed to create rules for Anyone. Since these rules affect other users, there is an option to prohibit their creation. Note, however, that System rules also affect other users and editing them must be allowed to all users.
  • Respect privacy of other users — Decide whether Network Monitor may display domain and host details for connections established by other users. Other users may not like if you see the domains they visit with their browser. Note that you decide for yourself whether you respect other users’ privacy. You cannot decide whether other users can see your connections.
  • Ignore code signature for connections to local network — There is a factory rule which allows access to the local network for trustworthy processes. This option determines whether allow rules for untrusted processes are automatically created when they try to connect to the local network.
  • Allow GUI scripting access to Little Snitch — Whether it is allowed to remote-control Little Snitch. It is obvious that allowing remote control undermines some of the security gained by Little Snitch, but you may need it for third party screen sharing applications, assistive devices or similar.

Advanced

  • Mark rules from connection alert as unapproved — Little Snitch Configuration marks unapproved rules with a blue bullet. It indicates that these rule were created outside of Little Snitch Configuration and you may want to review them. When this option is set, the connection alert creates rules with this unapproved-status.
  • Approve rules automatically — When this option is set, the unapproved-status is automatically removed from rules when you select them in Little Snitch Configuration. If it is not set, you need to approve rules manually, e.g. by clicking the Approve button in the top bar of the Unapproved Rules sidebar filter or by editing them (even when you cancel the Rule Editor).

Software Update

Snitch
  • Automatically check for updates — Whether Little Snitch should contact sw-update.obdev.at every day and check for new versions. Strongly recommended, in order to benefit from security updates! Failing to install a security update in a timely manner may leave your computer vulnerable to attacks. If you have a pre-release version installed (beta, nightly build or similar), this option is always on.
  • Show pre-release versions — Whether you want to be notified about betas, nightly builds and similar. Always on in pre-release versions.

Registration

You can view your license properties here, enter a license key or be redirected to our web site.

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