Omgtrips

DbVisualizer is a visual database tool that is designed for developers, database administrators as well as data analysts. The software features some cutting edge feature that makes it top-notch including a database browser, SQL tools, comprehensive support for database and OS.

Is there a good bit of software on Mac OS X that I can use to monitor incoming and outgoing network activity? Nothing too geeky, I just want something simple to use.

I'm on version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) if that helps.

Peter Mortensen

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8 Answers

Wireshark is widely acknowledged as one of the best network monitor tools available. Distributions are available for OS X.

If you prefer something more simplistic you can use iStatMenus to show incoming / outgoing network traffic speeds.

For the person who doesn't want to install anything you can also use tcpdump in Terminal.

Josh KJosh K

Also check out nettop, a little command line gem that ships with Mac OS.

Also look at MenuMeters. I tried iStat Menus & MenuMeters and preferred MM. Not saying one is better; just that there are a couple of choices.

A working version of MenuMeters for El Capitan can be found here.

LittleSnitch! - 30$

It is mainly a software Firewall that may help you to prevent some apps to access the internet. It also has a nice menubar icon with live network usage. Mouseover on it and it displays which app is communicating with which server or ip address.

I have LittleSnitch and iStat Menus installed. Both are complementary.

ArkoArko

Commercial (16$) iStat Pro and iStat Menus (dashboard widget and menu bar item respectively) are great for monitoring everything from network activity to CPU temperatures.

And of course there's the network tab of Activity Monitor.

sorin

Network Logger for Mac OS X from Group Mind does a great job of tracking network traffic, downtime (in real time, with timed log), and lots of easy-to-understand stuff. I'm not technical and all I really wanted was to track when my ISP connection went down, and for how long it stayed down. Mac's little Network Utility app would ping endlessly but wouldn't give me a chronological log. Network Logger did, and was easy for a novice to understand.

Cost me $5.99 from the App Store.

/System/Library/CoreServices/Network Diagnostics Simple green/red LEDs for various layers. I slide it over to the right side of the screen until just the lights show.

I've just installed Net Monitor and Net Monitor Sidekick and so far I like them. Nothing you can't get with other tools, but a nice summary display. Each is $10 after a 30 day eval, so YMMV, but I thought I'd mention them.

Free Mac Database

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Sensors, Parameters and Graph Plot

Sensors and parameters are what most of you find the most interesting part of the software. You can monitor all the sensor values that your car reports in real-time.

The software updates the values in sequential order as fast as possible. The speed depends only on the adapter. The more expensive genuine adapters will perform faster than the cheap clone OBD2 adapters. In addition to showing the current values, minimum, average and maximum values are provided too.

Some typical sensors include engine coolant temperature, fuel pressure, intake manifold absolute pressure and air flow rate from mass air flow sensor, to list few of them. The software has support for over 126 powertain parameters (PIDs) in the range of $00 - $7F. You can pick the most suitable data reading units; both metric and imperial (English) units are available.

Itool For Mac

You can also export or save the live sensor data to a .csv file. This file can be opened with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, for example. These external tools allow you to create custom graphs of your data.