[HN Gopher] Show HN: I built a macOS tool for network engineers ...
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Show HN: I built a macOS tool for network engineers - it's called
NetViews
Hi HN -- I'm the developer of NetViews, a macOS utility I built
because I wanted better visibility into what was actually happening
on my wired and wireless networks. I live in the CLI, but for
discovery and ongoing monitoring, I kept bouncing between tools,
terminals, and mental context switches. I wanted something faster
and more visual, without losing technical depth -- so I built a GUI
that brings my favorite diagnostics together in one place. About
three months ago, I shared an early version here and got a ton of
great feedback. I listened: a new name (it was PingStalker), a
longer trial, and a lot of new features. Today I'm excited to share
NetViews 2.3. NetViews started because I wanted to know if
something on the network was scanning my machine. Once I had that,
I wanted quick access to core details--external IP, Wi-Fi data, and
local topology. Then I wanted more: fast, reliable scans using ARP
tables and ICMP. As a Wi-Fi engineer, I couldn't stop there. I
kept adding ways to surface what's actually going on behind the
scenes. Discovery & Scanning: * ARP, ICMP, mDNS, and DNS discovery
to enumerate every device on your subnet (IP, MAC, vendor, open
ports). * Fast scans using ARP tables first, then ICMP, to avoid
the usual "nmap wait". Wireless Visibility: * Detailed Wi-Fi
connection performance and signal data. * Visual and audible tools
to quickly locate the access point you're associated with.
Monitoring & Timelines: * Connection and ping timelines over 1, 2,
4, or 8 hours. * Continuous "live ping" monitoring to visualize
latency spikes, packet loss, and reconnects. Low-level Traffic
(but only what matters): * Live capture of DHCP, ARP, 802.1X,
LLDP/CDP, ICMP, and off-subnet chatter. * mDNS decoded into human-
readable output (this took months of deep dives). Under the hood,
it's written in Swift. It uses low-level BSD sockets for ICMP and
ARP, Apple's Network framework for interface enumeration, and
selectively wraps existing command-line tools where they're still
the best option. The focus has been on speed and low overhead. I'd
love feedback from anyone who builds or uses network diagnostic
tools: - Does this fill a gap you've personally hit on macOS? - Are
there better approaches to scan speed or event visualization that
you've used? - What diagnostics do you still find yourself dropping
to the CLI for? Details and screenshots: https://netviews.app
There's a free trial and paid licenses; I'm funding development
directly rather than ads or subscriptions. Licenses include free
upgrades. Happy to answer any technical questions about the
implementation, Swift APIs, or macOS permission model.
Author : n1sni
Score : 146 points
Date : 2026-02-10 05:20 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.netviews.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.netviews.app)
| yohannparis wrote:
| Great job, I will give it a try. As I'm more interested for
| personal use, can it help me find the best WiFi channel to use
| for my network, as I live in a dense populated area?
| n1sni wrote:
| Yes - by telling you what ones NOT to use. Click audit and then
| Wi-Fi Checklist. Choose your network, and then it will tell you
| if you are on a good channel or not, automatically!
| rylando wrote:
| Is that a feature of the $20 plan? Or only the $50?
| n1sni wrote:
| Both will tell you - the $50 one will be much more
| detailed... but both give you yes/no feedback.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Looks very neat.
|
| Have you considered offering it through the App Store? I would
| pay a modestly higher price for that. Or for open source.
|
| But the combination of closed source and not being on the App
| Store is a bit of a dealbreaker for me.
| billyp-rva wrote:
| I'm very curious as someone who also offers Mac software but
| not on the app store... why is not being on there a
| dealbreaker?
| jon-wood wrote:
| Not the OP, but for me it's a combination of factors. For
| subscription software I like knowing I can cancel easily and
| will keep that subscription til the end of my current term.
| More generally it just means I know it'll be accessible to me
| in the future, regardless of whether your company goes bust
| and stops paying for the license activation servers.
| lenkite wrote:
| They are _less_ accessible in the future. Apps on the macOS
| App Store (as well as iOS, iPadOS, etc.) are taken down /
| removed from availability if the developer stops paying the
| Apple Developer Program subscription.
| asqueella wrote:
| People outside US may be able to pay through App store, but
| not through whatever payment processor you use.
| runjake wrote:
| I am not the OP, but my guess is that it uses APIs that
| disqualify it from the App Store. It looks like they are doing
| stuff with raw sockets and probably using some stuff from
| private 802.11 frameworks?
|
| The app looks fantastic. I'll probably end up buying it.
| n1sni wrote:
| I have considered it, but it would lose a lot of features. It
| would have to be a "lite" version. To get what we need, we
| would have to use an external device (think Raspberry Pi) to
| get the information needed. It's something we are looking at...
| but as a network guy, I use stuff outside the app store every
| day (Wireshark, Ekahau, etc.) and have no issue with it.
| reboot81 wrote:
| For me it's dealbreaker that it's available via homebrew.
|
| Not a stance or anything, but when I get a new Mac I use
| homebrew bundle If it's not in my brewfile from old Mac, theres
| a high probability I won't get it installed.
| n1sni wrote:
| I don't have a lot of experience with this... I'll look into
| it.
| n1sni wrote:
| This is actually really cool. I use Homebrew all the time,
| but didn't know GUI paid apps were a thing. Wow. THANK YOU!
| Coming to brew line near you soon :)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I downloaded, tried to try but I got "You've already used your
| 7-day trial on this Mac."
| n1sni wrote:
| Interesting! Sorry to hear this. Have you used the trial
| before? Let me think how to fix this for you... feel free to
| reach out via email.
| haloblue wrote:
| Excellent tool so far. Thanks for getting this out there.
| n1sni wrote:
| Thank you!
| drob518 wrote:
| Looks nice. MacOS has needed something like this for quite a
| while.
| phubbard wrote:
| Looks useful and I like the UI, it reminds me of UniFi. After a
| few minutes I had to force-quit and sent a report. I will buy it,
| I love messing about and have a reasonably complex home network
| and have been getting by with a mix of Unix and homemade tools;
| this is nicer.
| n1sni wrote:
| Interesting! I haven't run into that. I've been doing a ton of
| testing to avoid things like that. If it happens again, would
| you mind emailing me the report via the website? I don't get
| them when sent to Apple.
| moduspol wrote:
| Looks great. I bought a license just so I'm sure I've got it next
| time I'm debugging a network issue.
| n1sni wrote:
| Glad to hear it - send suggestions, please!
| edmundsauto wrote:
| If I may offer a marketing suggestion - make it easy for people
| to do a "proam" workflow to setup their own network. A "one click
| to diagnose and visualize your Wi-Fi setup". And then write
| content around that.
|
| This tool looks more powerful than what I would use, but if there
| were a kid version, I'd like someone to tell me how to improve my
| network performance.
| n1sni wrote:
| I've been thinking more and more about this - with all the
| crazy number of variables, it would be hard to code. So, I've
| been thinking of collecting EVERYTHING this gets, and then
| using AI to assist with a summary/description written for a
| 5-year-old :) Not sure I like the approach, but worth looking
| into.
| hubabuba44 wrote:
| It looks very slick!
|
| Cool to see more network tools for macOS.
|
| For anyone who does prefer a CLI-based approach, I maintain
| RustNet https://github.com/domcyrus/rustnet which is open source
| and cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows) with real-time
| connection monitoring, deep packet inspection, process
| identification, and a terminal UI. Obviously a different kind of
| tool than a polished GUI app like this, but if you live in the
| terminal or want something you can script and automate, it might
| be worth a look.
|
| On the macOS network tools side, have you looked into PKTAP? I
| use it in RustNet to get process-level attribution for network
| connections. Might be worth exploring if you want to tie traffic
| back to specific processes.
| n1sni wrote:
| As a rust _lover_ I 'll take a look! Thanks
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Congratulations on shipping! Looks awesome.
|
| Minor bug: I tried opening the WebP screen shots in another tab
| so I could zoom and see them more clearly, and it does not work.
| Chrome renders the WebP image data as text, and Safari prompts
| you to download it. This appears to be because the web server is
| not returning a `Content-Type` header for these URLs:
|
| curl --head
| https://www.netviews.app/_astro/ss7.D8bYvHF6_1awjYx.webp
|
| EDIT: Fixed! I see a Content-Type header now
| n1sni wrote:
| GREAT catch!! I think this is resolved now!
|
| curl --head
| https://www.netviews.app/_astro/ss7.D8bYvHF6_1awjYx.webp
| HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:54:07 GMT Server:
| Apache X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff X-Frame-Options:
| SAMEORIGIN X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block Referrer-Policy:
| strict-origin-when-cross-origin Strict-Transport-Security: max-
| age=31536000; includeSubDomains Upgrade: h2,h2c Connection:
| Upgrade Last-Modified: Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:46:18 GMT ETag:
| "d312-64a7afe97fe46" Accept-Ranges: bytes Content-Length: 54034
| Content-Type: image/webp
| billyhoffman wrote:
| Minor suggestion. I found this because the UI looked cool and
| I wanted to see a more zoomed in view of it. But right now
| the "Take control of your network today" is the only place
| with a really readable view of the UI. Perhaps add a gallery
| of screen shots, showing off different features?
| n1sni wrote:
| Noted! The help section on the site shows quite a bit more
| detail (although, it needs updating)... but you bring up a
| great point.
| molszanski wrote:
| This looks so pretty and awesome :)
| rylando wrote:
| Is it possible to buy the standard version and upgrade to the pro
| later for the difference between the two pricing tiers ($30)?
| n1sni wrote:
| Yes - I'm trying to figure out how best to do that (using an
| automated discount code or something), but email me, and I'll
| make it 100% happen.
|
| Also, I JUST enabled a 20% discount code if that helps you make
| a decision: HNROCKS - good for one day.
| RIMR wrote:
| My first thought, as a network engineer, is that I already have
| access to pretty much every feature of this tool from the CLI.
| You ask if I would give that up for this app, and the answer is
| "not unless you integrate all the other CLI tools I use as
| features". Obviously, that's not reasonable, because my needs
| (like most engineers) are overly specific. You could never please
| everyone.
|
| If this were an iPad/iPhone app, I would say that you nailed it,
| because this would be way easier and more complete than any of
| the tooling I have available on a mobile device right now.
| Otherwise, all of my other tooling is in the CLI, so I would
| ultimately be going out of my way to use this tool on my Mac.
|
| The easiest fix I can think of is to open the door to third-
| party/community extensions so that people can add their own
| tooling to the app. You mention that this is largely a bunch of
| CLI wrappers, so it would be very helpful if we could write our
| own, and maybe even share them with each other.
| n1sni wrote:
| Understood. Trust me, I still keep a few consoles open... but
| it's a lot fewer tabs with NetViews going because for my use
| cases, it's doing 95+% of the work without effort.
|
| I really like the extension idea... hmmm....
| nickthegreek wrote:
| The info on your About page
|
| >NetViews is a modern, macOS network scanning app inspired by the
| specialized needs of IT, engineering, and network professionals.
| It combines host discovery, port scanning, real-time monitoring,
| and vendor/DNS insights with a clean, native interface - giving
| you the tools you need without the complexity you don't.
|
| Should be right on the front page above the fold.
| n1sni wrote:
| Awesome feedback. I _just_ re-did the site 2 days ago - so
| still moving stuff around. But you are RIGHT.
| PonyoSunshine wrote:
| I talked to you last month when you posted this. I did end up
| buying a copy, and it has been somewhat useful.
|
| Three things, it drives me nuts when it migates to the localhost
| interface, but doesn't migrate back. Either, we need to lock to
| an interface, or just have the option to remove one.
|
| Two, constantly bouncing in the dock is incredibly annoying and
| distracting. We don't need more distractions, we need less.
|
| Three, showing the wifi mesh info has actually proven to help,
| but it would really be even more helpful if you could expand that
| to rates and more wifi protocols.
| n1sni wrote:
| Hello! I think I might have missed that feedback - please send
| again!
|
| 1) This has been fixed - if you update, it will automatically
| move back to the default gateway interface. 2) That can be
| disabled in the settings... 3) On it's way :)
| brailsafe wrote:
| Looks great I don't have a nees for it, but I'm also happy to see
| more specialized tools being built natively for macOS, despite
| Apple's poor releases lately. I have no plans to use anything but
| a mac in the near future, and normally am happy to pay for a
| well-crafted mac first app.
|
| Did you use or have any problems with SwiftUI that you found
| workarounds for? It's been a while since I've played with it, but
| last I checked it was a bit underperforming and opaque
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(page generated 2026-02-10 23:00 UTC)