Netfox — Network Scanner & Security Toolkit for macOS<br>Skip to ContentNetfox v0.5.0 — a native network monitor for macOS. See what's new
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DocumentationIntroduction
Getting Started<br>ToolsOverview<br>Wi-Fi<br>Devices<br>Security<br>Optimization
Menu Bar<br>Settings<br>Keyboard Shortcuts
FAQ<br>Release Notes<br>Roadmap
Download<br>CommunityBlog<br>Report an Issue
About<br>Sponsors<br>Light
Free for macOS 15+<br>Know who's on your network — always.
Netfox is a native macOS network monitor. Every connected device, when it joined, and what's new — at a glance. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.<br>Download for macOSSee what it does
Overview
The Problem<br>Seeing who's on your network shouldn't require a cloud account
Router admin pages<br>Show MACs and IPs, but dated UI and no history. You only see what’s online right now.
Terminal tools<br>Give precise data, but no big picture. One scan at a time, results never persist.
Vendor cloud apps<br>Beautiful, but send your data to the cloud and lock you into one router brand.
The Solution<br>One window. Every device. Live.
Netfox — Your Network
Giovambattista’s Mac Studio<br>192.168.1.12
This Mac
Router<br>192.168.1.1
Online
HomePod Living Room<br>192.168.1.33
Online
BRAVIA 4K<br>192.168.1.4
Online
iPad Pro<br>192.168.1.191
Offline
HP ENVY 7640<br>192.168.1.27
Online
Features<br>Everything you need, nothing you don't
Multi-Source Discovery<br>Bonjour, ARP, SSDP, NetBIOS and active probing run together. Apple devices, smart-TVs, IoT, quiet hosts — all in the same list.
Risk-Aware Security<br>One-click Scan All checks every reachable device against a curated set of home-network ports. Risk Inspector explains each finding in plain English.
Per-Device History<br>First seen, last seen, every online/offline transition, every IP/hostname/vendor change. Timeline survives across launches.
Five Kinds of Alert<br>New device, returning after long absence, risky arrival, port-state change, new service. Inbox + persistent log + per-device mute.
Menu Bar at a Glance<br>A menu bar popover shows devices online, risk level, public IP and VPN, and active alerts — without opening the main window.
Native macOS<br>Built in SwiftUI for macOS 15+. Follows system appearance. Universal binary.
No Account, No Cloud<br>Data stays on your Mac. No telemetry, no sign-up, no vendor lock-in. One-keystroke Demo Mode masks names, MACs, IPv6 and SSIDs for safe screenshots.
Built for macOS<br>100% native SwiftUI. Fast. Familiar. Yours.<br>SwiftUI<br>macOS Notifications<br>Keyboard Shortcuts<br>Context Menus<br>Universal Binary<br>Apple Silicon<br>Intel Support
No Electron. No web views. A real macOS app that feels like it belongs on your Mac.
Get Started<br>Know your network. Always.<br>Download Netfox and see who's really connected.<br>Download for macOSFree · macOS 15 Sequoia or later
FAQ<br>Frequently Asked Questions<br>What is Netfox?Netfox is a native macOS app that shows you a live list of every device on your home network, with first-seen / last-seen history, alerts when something new connects, port-probe risk badges, and a Wi-Fi diagnostics tool. Five focused tools (Overview, Wi-Fi, Devices, Security, Optimization) share the same store, so a finding in one shows up everywhere it matters.
Is Netfox free?Yes, Netfox is currently free. If you find it useful, consider sponsoring the project.
What macOS version do I need?macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later. Netfox is built with SwiftUI and uses APIs available from macOS 15+.
How does Netfox find devices?Five discovery passes work in parallel: Bonjour/mDNS (Apple devices, AirPlay, HomeKit, printers), the system ARP cache (anything that has talked on the LAN recently), SSDP (smart-TVs, media servers, UPnP devices), NetBIOS (Windows shares), and active ICMP probing for known IPs (catches devices that are alive but quiet). Results merge into one device record per physical device.
What does the Security tool actually check?It opens a TCP connection to a curated list of well-known home-network ports (SSH, Telnet, RDP, VNC, SMB, AFP, NFS, HTTP, HTTPS, MQTT, AirPlay, Plex, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, and a few more) on every device that responds on the LAN. Each open port is classified by risk, and the Risk Inspector explains in plain English what each finding means and what to do about it. No raw-socket scanning, no root access, no fingerprinting — just unprivileged TCP probes.
What is Demo Mode?A one-keystroke privacy mask (⌘⇧D) for screenshots, screen-shares, and bug-report attachments. While Demo Mode is on, device names collapse to "Computer #1" / "Phone #2", MAC addresses lose their last three octets (vendor OUI stays), IPv6 loses everything past the first hextet, and Wi-Fi SSIDs become "Network #N". It only affects the UI — the underlying store is untouched, so flipping Demo Mode off restores every real value instantly.
Why does the Wi-Fi tool ask for Location permission?Apple gates SSID details behind Location permission at the macOS level — without it, the system returns empty network names. Netfox uses location only to read the Wi-Fi...